


Three

by jaxington



Series: Twenty-One [2]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Bipolar Disorder, F/F, F/M, Flashbacks, Homophobic Language, Ian Gallagher has a really rough go of it, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-12 12:46:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 41,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4479734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaxington/pseuds/jaxington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's great, Mick," Ian murmurs.  "And it's yours.  Like a home, or something."</p><p>Mickey hums, his lips at Ian's temple.  "Home now, maybe.  With you here."</p><p>Dystopia AU</p><p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3775402">Eighteen</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the flashbacks. They tend to hurt.

There are straps crossing in an X over his chest. Black and tight, the only thing keeping him sitting upright.

Ian leans forward, into the straps, and he knows they dig into his skin, knows that there will be X shaped bruises to match the jagged line of stitches in his palm. But knowing is not feeling and he just can’t feel anything physical passed this utter, crushing despair swimming around in his blood, totally clouding his mind.

He just wants to lie down, to close his eyes forever, but these straps against his chest keep him upright and sitting.

He’s on a hovercraft. He’s never even seen a hovercraft before this, but he fucked up and now, somehow, he’s on one. The steady thrum of its engine vibrates in his ears, rattles his teeth.

In front of him is some Pop Com goon, talking constantly about rules and what to expect and where he’s going, but Ian can’t get anything to stick in his mind, can’t find the energy to focus.

All Ian can do is lean forward and cry. That’s what has to be making his face hot and wet. Tears.

Without even closing his eyes, Ian can still see the expression on Mickey’s face when they dragged him off the moment the doc was done stitching up his hand. There in the hospital, Ian with stiches in his hand and Mickey with tears in his eyes, would be their last moment together. Ever. Mickey nearly got taken himself, protesting, fighting, Lip holding him back, and it’s all Ian’s fucking fault.

When he recalls the expression on Mickey’s face, that he can actually feel, a sharper pain poking in through the rest of it.

But he can’t dwell on anything for long because suddenly the straps keeping him upright are removed and he’s hauled to his feet, figures in black on either side taking his arms and forcing him to move, even though he’s sure that on the next step he’ll die of exhaustion, and if not the next step, then the one after that.

Outside the sun off the snow is too bright and Ian squeezes his eyes shut. Inside, the florescent lights are worse.

He gets a bunk and fucking finally he can lie down, curl up, let his aching bones melt into the thin mattress beneath him. But they won’t let him stay that way as long as he needs too.

There are hands on him again, bruising fingers and angry voices. He cannot move like they want him to, and suddenly Ian can only feel pain, the sharp physical kind as his veins light up and his muscles go tense. He’s down on his back again, lying there twitching on the concrete floor, a guard above him with a stun gun.

“Welcome to Seventeen,” he says.

Wherever they take him next, it’s quiet and it’s dark and he’s alone. Too small and constantly shrinking, this space is the physical manifestation of how his mind has been for weeks.

He deserves to be here, where the outside matches his insides. He deserves to be locked away in the dark and forgotten. If Lip and Mickey forget him quickly, that would be best. Forgetting means they won’t hurt like Ian hurts.

On the cold, hard floor, Ian makes a pillow with his hands and the stitches in his palm press into his cheek.

* * *

Dreaming of Mickey is not unusual.

When he closes his eyes, he often searches the woods for Mickey, finding him more often than not. Sometimes, it’s a kid that crawls out from behind boulders or down from trees when Ian finds him, small and dirty. On the best nights, Mickey smiles. It’s just them, and sometimes Lip, living the simple life Ian ruined the moment he pressed that blade into his palm.

Sometimes Mickey is seventeen, with dark bags under his eyes. In their last months together, Mickey worried about Ian constantly and it showed in his pallor. Blinded by the first thrill of mania, Ian did not see the worry he caused, but he dreams it a lot. Those nights he wakes up guilty, and faintly nauseous, but dreaming of Mickey those last few months together is far from the worst of Ian's nightmares.

Too often, it’s the flash of the stun gun, the darkness of The Shed, the hands on his skin when he just wants to sleep.

Dreaming of Mickey, any version, is vastly preferable.

Over the years, Ian's dreamed nearly every possible variation of Mickey, but his dreams never had a smell like they do now. This is a scent long forgotten, along with how Lip's face looks when he smiles and what it feels like to swim in the lake, free of care or concern.

Ian breathes deep, overjoyed that this smell, earthy and soothing and undeniably Mickey, has returned to him somehow.

Sighing, he presses closer to the warm body against his chest.

This is a good dream. It smells like Mickey, and he feels truly safe, for once.

Only Ian is slowly waking. There’s light behind his closed eyelids, but the warm body pressed against his chest does not disappear with his dream.

The morning turns into a waking nightmare and Ian scrambles away, sitting up and taking in his surroundings, a private guard's room with its standard furniture and relative luxury.

Ian's lived this morning countless times, when he was manic and he wanted things he can’t imagine wanting now. When he just needed somewhere safe to rest. When he just needed to be touched, even if the hands were wrong.

This scenario, Ian confused and panicked and vulnerable, totally at the mercy of the other body in the bed, is a familiar one, but not the kind of morning he's lived since they finally – fucking finally – got his meds figured out.

This room is blessed with a window and morning light is pouring in, letting Ian see more than he wants to see.

He’s naked, his clothes strewn about on the floor all mixed up with guard's black clothes.

Breathing gets difficult, bile bubbling in his stomach. He was doing so well.

Doc B will call this a minor setback, slipping back into old patters, and nothing he can’t handle, but Ian will drown in guilt, in self-loathing. He was doing so well.

But then he really looks at the body in the bed next to his and it's Mickey, somehow.

Somehow, it’s Mickey.

There is Mickey, sleeping on his side with an arm hugging a pillow to his chest. There is Mickey's profile and long eyelashes and dark hair, messy from Ian's hands.

Ian did not dream Mickey's smell or that moment when he stood at the top of the hovercraft's ramp, gaping down at Mickey dressed like Ian's nightmares.   He did not dream the glorious moments after, that led to Mickey and Ian naked in this regulation guard bed. He did not dream lying on his side, facing Mickey and watching him sleep like he used to when they were just kids, before Mickey finally woke up and kissed him again.

Fully awake now, the events of the last few hours return to him; Mickey, The Captain of Eighteen, and the realization that he put in for Ian's transfer. Mickey eleven years older but looking at Ian just the same. Mickey insisting that things are different here and apologizing over and over until Ian's need to touch him overcame his dismay at seeing Mickey in all that black.

Ian stares at the steady rise and fall of Mickey's chest, trying to convince himself that this is real. After years of working to accept that he’d never see his family again, or know what became of them, years worried that his broken brain invented them, here is Mickey asleep and within touching distance.

Next to him, Mickey’s breathing deep and steady, but Ian can barely catch a breath. He’s gasping, nearly hiccuping, and he can’t seem to get enough air.

He's terrified of fucking this up again and still so in love with this man who's never stopped searching for him and so fucking happy he might burst with it at any moment. He has hundreds of questions and hundreds of secrets he hopes Mickey never learns and after the stable routine of the last few years, Ian honestly doesn’t know what this day will look like or all the days after that and mostly he doesn’t care even if he clings to his routine like a life raft because the warm body he woke up to is _Mickey_.

It’s a lot. Almost too much.

He sits there, staring at the rise and fall of Mickey’s chest, until he can breathe in time with Mickey. Finally getting enough air now, Ian just smiles.

Watching Mickey sleep is all Ian wants to do for the rest of his life, but a quick glance at the clock on the bedside table tells him that it’s pill time. Ian's whole world is currently asleep in this bed, so close and so real, but Ian is still bipolar.

With great reluctance he crawls out of bed, careful not to disturb Mickey. Picking up his bag where he dropped it by the door yesterday, he rummages around, glancing up every few seconds to make sure Mickey is still there. He gets his hands on his morning dose and helps himself to the water bottle on Mickey's bedside table.

Except it’s not water, but some sort of alcohol that burns as it takes his pills down his throat.

Grimacing, he eyes the clear liquid in the bottle. It’s not ideal, as he doesn’t drink, but one small sip shouldn’t fuck with him too badly. He takes a whiff, his eyes watering. It smells like the shit Mandy makes and Ian wonders again what Mickey’s life has been like, if he’s just got bottles of liquor lying around in his room like this.

“What the shit, Mickey,” he mutters, going back to staring at him with a combination of awe and concern. The awe quickly overwhelms anything else, because for the first morning in thousands of mornings, Mickey is right here.

And he sleeps the same.

He’s always wanted to be on his side – preferably the right – hugging something to his chest. In the last eleven years he's probably been hugging pillows instead of Ian.

Unless he's spent any of that time sharing his bed with someone else. Like Ian did.

Ian shakes off the thought and so many others like it. When Mickey wakes up there will be too much to talk about – how the fuck Mickey ended up a fucking captain, what Mickey plans on doing with Ian now that's he's here, why Mickey thought it would be okay to leave Lip on his own in Chicago – but Ian would rather just stand here, simply watching Mickey sleep.

Mickey looks the same, especially when his features are all smoothed out. His skin is still weirdly perfect, his dark hair cut short, his body solid and compact. In comparison Ian is worn thin. Stretched out. Tired.

Mickey used to wake up slow, eyebrows first. He would stir, his brow furrowing, his lips parting, before he finally opened his eyes. Now, on this very special morning, Mickey jerks awake, sitting up so quickly that he nearly bashes his skull into the headboard.

Loving how bemused and sleepy Mickey looks, Ian bites back a laugh.

"Hey," Mickey murmurs, relaxing back down onto his pillow.

"Surprised to see me?" Ian asks.

"Yeah," Mickey replies. "Thought I might’ve dreamed you. Happened before."

“Me too. Might’ve thought it was a dream just a minute ago.”

It’s a little odd, to feel so bashful around Mickey, but for a few moments they just grin at each other and it’s perfect.

Until Mickey notices the pill keeper, still clutched in Ian’s hand.

"Meds?" Mickey murmurs.

Ian nods, looking at his feet, ashamed when he shouldn't be. Mandy would kill him for offering this information so freely, but this is Mickey.

 _His_ Mickey, even with his black clothes.

"Yeah, it's been about six years, now. Getting the cocktail right was a nightmare, took forever, but I've been okay for awhile."

"Fuck," says Mickey, sitting up again, just as suddenly. "Did I fuck up your pill pipeline? You still gonna be able to get your shit?"

This is one of the things Ian and Mandy discussed at length when Ian's transfer went through. Mandy thought it would take her some time to get in good with the guards who import contraband, but she was pretty sure it wouldn't be a problem.

Now it’ll be even less of a problem, as Ian’s got an in with the fucking Captain.

"You got connections to DC?" Ian asks, sitting on the edge of the bed. He rests a hand on Mickey's knee because he can, because he never wants to stop touching Mickey again. "That's where my doc is."

"Yeah," says Mickey, obviously relieved. "Got someone here who gets anti-anxiety stuff from there. We'll figure it out."

Ian stares at Mickey and Mickey stares back. The room is quiet and so awkward, until Mickey shakes his head, laughing. Somehow it breaks the tension and when Mickey pats the mattress at his side, Ian doesn’t hesitate to ditch his pills on the bedside table and wrap himself around Mickey.

“Can’t believe you’re really here,” Mickey whispers into Ian’s collarbone.

Resting his cheek against his head, Ian nods. He holds Mickey a little tighter, assuring himself that this is real.

Even in recent years, even after he got on the right meds and his memories solidified into something more trustworthy, Ian couldn't be one hundred percent certain that Mickey was real until that moment when he stood at the top of the ramp to see two of the people he loves most in this world yelling at each other.

And then later his Mickey was standing there in the wrong clothes, furious like Ian’s also furious, yelling about how he couldn't leave Ian behind, and Ian knew that all his memories were true. All that love and need and understanding came flooding back, and Ian wanted Mickey so badly, needed him so badly.

"Can't believe it either," Ian says.

Tilting his head back to look Ian in the eye, Mickey nods. He cradles Ian's jaw, pulling his lips closer for a gentle, morning-sour kiss.

It's Ian that pushes Mickey flat on his back, taking the kiss from gentle to hot. He needs as much of this as possible, before it inevitably gets complicated. He wants as much of Mickey as he can get, while it’s just about them and their history and how much they still love each other.

Eventually, Mickey's going to put on his goddamn black uniform again and it will all evaporate. Everything will be complicated by the unequal power between them. Mickey might say it’s different here, but Ian's still a prisoner and Mickey's still a guard.

Not just a guard,but a motherfucking captain.

But as long as he’s right here, kissing Ian, touching Ian, then he’s just Mickey.

There's a knock on Mickey's door and Ian freezes. He knows how this works, knows that he needs to hide. Ian will be a dirty little secret like he’s always been a dirty little secret. But being Mickey’s might make it bearable.

"Fuck." Mickey sighs heavily. He doesn't look terrified by the prospect of getting caught, just annoyed. "What!"

Ian tries to calm his racing pulse.

"It's Karen!" says someone from behind the door.

"Go the fuck away!"

"No!"

"Ignore her," Mickey says to Ian, flipping their positions so Ian's on his back. He's shocked enough to go without comment. Mickey bends to kiss his neck, his hand in Ian's hair. Mickey's complete relaxation is baffling. "She'll go away."

"Will _not_!" says Karen. "Put some pants on, drag yourself away from lover boy, and come talk to me for, like, two seconds."

Again, Mickey is merely annoyed as he mutters curses in the general direction of the door. It's not fair, that Mickey is so clam while Ian can barely breathe passed his fear. Doesn't Mickey care that people know? It's Ian that’ll be punished for fraternization, mocked, and ostracized, but Mickey should still care.

It’s been years since he’s been thrown in The Shed and he’s not about to go back now.

"Sorry," Mickey says, pressing his lips into Ian's temple. "Give me a minute."

Ian manages a nod, sitting up to follow Mickey out of bed. He can hide in the closet or maybe against the wall.

"You stay comfortable," Mickey says, a hand on Ian's chest. Ian wants to shove the hand away, to get up and keep himself hidden and safe, but he leans back against Mickey's pillows anyway.

Mickey pulls on his goddamn guard pants on the way to the door. Even in black he looks so fucking good, but getting an eyeful of Mickey's body – complete with new, really impressive arm muscles – can't distract him from the terror of getting caught.

And he just got here, too. It was good while it lasted.

"Yo," says Mickey, sliding the door open just a crack. He looks like he's trying to block Ian from view with his body. There is a momentary scuffle as Mickey tries to sneak out into the hall, but then doors gets forced open a little wider, despite Mickey’s best efforts. A little blond head immediately pops in between his shoulder and the door frame.

"Hey!" she says, looking directly at Ian. He recognizes her from the pad yesterday, a prisoner that didn't seem to like Mandy much. "So you must be Mickey’s long lost love, huh? Karen."

"Fuck, Karen," mutters Mickey, glancing over his shoulder at Ian and smiling apologetically. "Will you give him a minute to settle in before you get all fucking nosy?"

Karen rolls her eyes and Ian gapes. He can’t think of anything beyond a _prisoner_ calling a _captain_ by his name. It goes against everything Ian knows about how to survive The Farmland, how to survive the guards.

"Ian," he finally says, because everyone seems to expect him to introduce himself.

"Hi, Ian," Karen says, grinning. "Hot name for a hot guy."

"Okay, okay," Mickey says, elbowing her back into the hall. "Did you fucking need something or are you just here to rubber neck?"

"Well, I _was_ here to bring you breakfast," she replies, "but maybe I just won't give it to you, you ungrateful asshole."

Mickey sighs heavily, reminding Ian that he knows things beyond survival. He knows that sigh, knows how easily people in general irritate Mickey. Knows that he can trust Mickey, even if whatever is happening here leaves him shocked and confused.

"Thanks for breakfast," Mickey says, taking a tray from her hands. "Now beat it."

"Whoa, hold up," she says before Mickey can slam the door in her face. "Was in your office this morning and your tablet’s blowing up." She shoves the tablet under Mickey's arm.

"Why were you in my office?" Mickey asks, again just irritated when he should be livid and throwing people in The Shed.

"Got our first bloomer of the season!" Karen says, jumping slightly. "Was looking for the wager list to see who won this year. Here at Eighteen, we bet on the first tree to get a few buds and on what day."

She seems to be talking to Ian now and from his position in Mickey's bed, he nods back.

"Who was it?" Mickey asks.

"A4 was the tree," says Karen. "Malik was closest."

"Fucking Malik!" Mickey snaps. "He's a goddamn newbie! How the hell would he know? Never seen a spring out here."

"Luck, I guess. Mickey never wins," Karen says, talking to Ian again.

Under his arm, Mickey’s tablet vibrates and lets out a little _ping_.

"Might want to get that," Karen says.

"As soon as you go the fuck away, I will. Anything else?"

"Shelia wants to talk to you about buttons," Karen says. "And she wants to start working in the kitchens, letting me run the sewing room.”

“Karen, you stab people with needles when you get annoyed.”

“Won’t do that anymore when I’m in charge!”

Ian’s mind is whirling. It’s like watching a play that takes place on a different planet. Or maybe this whole thing has just been one long, bizarre dream.

“I’ll talk to Shelia,” Mickey agrees. “That it?”

Karen grins.“Not much to do outside yet. No one’s going to miss you in the sewing room so you two can continue with the _reuniting_ all day."

Mickey really does slide the door shut in her face now and from the hall Karen cackles.

"Sorry," Mickey says, balancing the tray and his tablet as he makes his way back to the bed. He hands Ian the tray and lets the tablet drop to the mattress. "Karen's never been one to mind her own business, even if she’s private as fuck."

Ian is so amazed by the concept of a prisoner having any privacy, and everything else he just witnessed, he barely manages a nod.

"Hungry?" Mickey asks, crawling back into bed. "Got oatmeal and more oatmeal. Damn, I hate this time of year. No fruit yet."

Reminding himself that this is still Mickey, even if he's got on half a guard uniform, Ian leans over and presses a smile into his shoulder.

"I'm hungry," Ian agrees, accepting the bowl.

Next to them, the tablet pings again. And again.

"The fuck," Mickey mutters. His oatmeal goes back on the tray, the tablet into his hands.

Ian hooks his chin over Mickey's shoulder, pulling Mickey’s back flush with his chest, reading the tablet, just to see if Mickey will let him in on official captain business. Mickey doesn't brush him off. He reads over email notifications and a shit ton of requests to play a game called _L's Balls to the Wall Bouncer!!!_

"Wow," says Ian. "Someone really wants you to play this shitty game."

"Ian," Mickey murmurs, opening the app. "Not a game. It's your fucking brother."

Of the three hundred questions Ian has for Mickey, Lip is the first hundred and fifty. He's refrained from asking until now, unsure if he can handle what became of his brother with Ian taken and Mickey a guard.

"Lip?" Ian murmurs. He gapes down at the tablet as Mickey types in lines of fucking Lip Latin to open an instant messenger. "Shit, Mickey."

* * *

 

Words appear on the screen too quickly, after he hears the abridged version of what became of his brother (taken, smuggled to Boston, flourishing), with Mickey typing to answer Lip—

LG: get online right the fuck now shithead crazy shit is going down

MM: my crazy shit beats your crazy shit guaranteed

And Mickey's snorting, shaking his head. "He's got crazy shit going on? Got you right here in my bed and he's got the big news?" Mickey's hand settles at Ian's leg. "Yeah fucking right."

And Lip – Lip, his brother, his twin, safe in a free city, living better than Ian ever imagined because Mickey says so – replies.

LG: bullshit

LG: we found Yev's mom

LG: think its making him miss you more somehow

This only adds to the ever growing list of Things Ian Doesn’t Know, about his twin and about the love of his fucking life.

"Fuck," says Mickey.

"Who's Yev?" asks Ian. _Why would he miss you?_

And Mickey’s talking, quietly, gently, about Yevgeny. Mickey explains with words that don't belong in the same sentence. "Prisoner" and "taken at age twelve" and "smuggled out to Lip with a pregnant lady and a guard."

"Can't believe he found his mom," Mickey mutters. "What the fuck."

And its obvious that he's tempted by Lip's unbelievable news, wants to type out questions and demand answers. Ian still has his chin hooked over Mickey shoulder, still holds him with hands that have been shaking since Mickey said it's your brother, _your_ brother, your _brother_. Mickey glances back at Ian, struggling to breathe right on his shoulder, and shakes his head, refocuses.

MM: never mind tell me about it later

MM: my news is bigger

And suddenly Ian is panicking, the thought of talking to Lip again is too big and terrifying for reasons he doesn't really understand.

When he was transferred he didn't know that it was Mickey. He was wary, but he didn't know it was Mickey pulling the strings, getting him out of Three, so he didn't know to panic over seeing Mickey again. Then Mickey was right there, within touching distance, and Ian didn't have time to fret over all his new scars and the shakes in his hands from the meds that were adjusted almost a year ago, when he had that manic moment. He was too focused on Mickey, alive and real in front of him, to remember to panic.

But Lip is just words on a screen, Mickey's promise that they are coming from Ian's brother, his twin, and he has all the time in the world to panic, now.

"Hey," Mickey murmurs, turning his head, pushing his nose into Ian's cheek. He laces their fingers together. "Breathe, tough guy. Deep breaths."

Ian listens when Mickey says breathe, just like he listens when Doc B writes reminders to do the same, her patterns specifically paced and soothing, at the end of her letters. He counts out breaths like Doc B taught him, breathing like Mickey says to.

"Its just Lip," Mickey continues, talking quiet, talking calm. "Older, yeah, but still Lip like you remember him, with that annoying smirk and that big brain and loving you with everything he's got. Still Lip and, fuck, has he missed you. Knowing that you’re safe is gonna be everything to him."

And on the screen, Lip is still chatting.

LG: AND! AND! i got this chick working with me, helping me improve communication

"Your brother is totally banging her," Mickey says. He's watching Ian carefully out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the okay to interrupt Lip's rambling.

LG: she has this great idea about putting together a database website thing that will help people find each other

LG: like people would sign themselves up with their names and where they are and it would be a searchable database so they could get in touch with their families in Chicago or in other sections

LG: this is only gonna be needed if your Followers of M ever get their shit together of course

And now Ian has so many new questions, on how the fuck Mickey’s heard of the bullshit revolution Iggy’s been promising for years, if M is real, if Mickey knows them. But even these big questions can wait, because Lip is on the other side of the screen, his brother, his twin, alive and safe and living free.

“Ian,” Mickey murmurs, fingers posed to type out whatever message Ian wants to relay.

Ian breathes a little more, measured and deep. "Okay. Tell him."

MM: shut the fuck up for two seconds

MM: i found him

MM: Ian's right here, reading over my shoulder

And a pause that lasts forever—

LG: Ian?

LG: you really there?

And Mickey’s handing over the tablet, placing it in Ian’s hands. It’s been so long since he’s done anything so precise and so gentle with his fingers, but Ian manages to spell out the words.

MM: hey big brother

LG: fuck

LG: fuck!

LG: fuck wish I was there

LG: miss you so fucking much

MM: me too

LG: you okay? you safe? healthy?

MM: yes yes and mostly, yes

LG: mickey's got you?

MM: yeah, mickey's got me

* * *

 

Leaving The Shed is a relief.

At some point the dark, small space starts to suck the air from his lungs, and until they crack the door and let the light in, Ian thinks he made the whole world up. Maybe there is nothing out there, no Chicago or Farmland or Mickey or Lip. It's all just in his head. Ian is a creature of the dark, destined to be alone in the cold.

But they do crack the door and Ian knows that he's crazy but not that crazy because there is the world with its sun and its sky. This is Seventeen. The Pop Com goon on the craft told him that, and here it is, existing.

Everything aches and he tries his best to choke down breakfast, ignoring the curious stares from his fellow prisoners. Some are understanding, some pity him, and some are just mean.

It takes intense effort to get up, to follow a guard and a prisoner to a greenhouse, to listen as they explain the work he will be doing. Somehow he summons the strength to look up and take in his surroundings for the first time.

Tomatoes. Rows and rows of tomato plants.

Mickey would love this.

The thought makes him laugh and that hurts, too. His pain is back, the agony of existing dim enough now that he feels his loss and grief fully. Mickey would love this greenhouse and Ian will never be able to show it to him, will never again see his eyes light up when he talks about vegetables. It hits Ian right in the chest like a physical blow.

He laughs and laughs until the effort of keeping his body upright becomes too much and he falls to his knees. At the last moment he catches himself with his hands in the dirt before he can face plant forward into it. The soil is soft and real between his fingers. It smells like Mickey. Water is collecting on the ground before him, turning the dirt into a tiny spot of saturated mud. It takes him longer than it should to realize these are tears falling from his cheeks.

He wants Mickey so badly he can't breathe.

And then he gets the stun gun again. It does absolutely nothing to help with the breathing.

* * *

 

"You sure you want to do this?" Mickey asks. Again.

Ian rolls his eyes. Again. "Yeah, Mick. It was my idea!"

"Cuz if you ain't up for meeting a shit ton of people who don't know how to mind their own fucking business, I get it. If you’re tired or something."

Ian laughs and throws his arm around Mickey's shoulders. "Used to hauling around giant flanks of meat all day. Think I can handle a tour of your tiny section."

"Fuck you, we ain't tiny."

"Tiny's not bad! But come on. You've only got like fifty people here. That's tiny."

Mickey grumbles under his breath, holding open the door to a stairway.

This is the first time that they’ve left Mickey’s room in two days, with the exception of a brief trip to Mickey’s office and an evening spent sitting on the roof to watch the sunset.

It’s been all fucking and talking and Lip, the frantically typed words on Mickey’s tablet, more of his brother than he ever thought he’d have again. Lip’s flourishing. That’s Mickey’s word. Flourishing, and from everything Lip’s told him, it’s true. He’s running Boston’s internet, living in a free city.

Conversations with Mickey have been admittedly one sided as Ian is eager to learn everything about Mickey’s last eleven years and willing to share very little of his own. Ian’s responses have been equally lame expressions of shock. “You raised _who_ , Mickey?” “You’re plotting a _what_ , Mickey?”

Between the kid and the revolution, it’s a lot to process. Ian’s really curious about the former and deeply skeptical about the latter, but mostly he’s just proud. Mickey’s built a life out here, found a family.

Sure, Ian talked about Mandy and Kev and the others at Three, but mostly he asked questions and gladly reminisced over days long gone, when they were young and happily together.

After two days convincing himself that he’s really, truly with Mickey again, he is now determined to carve out a spot for himself next to Mickey at Eighteen. And this task involves actually leaving Mickey’s room. Unfortunately.

"So,” says Ian, pausing on the top stair. “What am I supposed to say?”

“Say about what?” Mickey asks, frowning up at Ian from a couple stairs below.

Ian’s cheeks heat and he looks at his feet. “Just, about us? I mean, how do I act? Like I’m a prisoner? You’re the Captain? But you basically told Karen and I—“

“Fuck,” interrupts Mickey. “Such an asshole. Shoulda explained better.”

Ascending the couple of stairs between them, Mickey reaches out to play with Ian’s fingers.

“When I say it’s different here, I really fucking mean it. You can say anything you want. And you can act however you want. And yeah, you and the others might technically be prisoners, but no one’s gonna be treating you that way. Been firing guards who operate like that for years, finally got rid of all those assholes when I made captain.”

“Yeah?” asks Ian, scratching the back of his head.

“Yeah.”

It’s unbelievable, that a place like this can exist in the same system, right along side Three. If anyone else spouted out this farcical, idyllic bullshit at him – like Iggy used to until he finally learned to shut up around Ian – he wouldn’t believe a word, dismissing it as some guard ploy to fuck with him or a delusional prisoner trying to make themselves feel better.

But this is Mickey. And he’s always believed Mickey.

Even if he is once more decked out in all black.

“So,” Ian says, draping his arms over Mickey shoulders. “Can talk to you like we’re together. Touch you like we’re together.”

Mickey clears his throat before he can speak. “Sure.”

“Did you tell them about me?” Ian asks.

"Fuck no," Mickey replies, grimacing.

“Oh.”

"Come on, don't give me the chin," Mickey says, hands on Ian’s hips to keep him close. "Just fucking couldn't, okay? Too fucking painful, talking about you, but most people figured it out anyway. Vee knows about you. And Yev. Karen must have just fucking guessed and I guarantee everyone knows now, knows where you spent the last couple nights. Fucking bunch of gossips."

And that Ian understands. He only ever told Mandy about Mickey, like his memories of Mickey were too precious to share with just anyone.

"Sure you still wanna do this today?" Mickey asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Gonna have to eventually, right?"

Mickey shrugs and takes Ian’s hand, leading him down the stairs.

The moment they get out of the stairwell and into the front room where he met Shelia at check-in a couple days ago, Mandy's there.

"You okay?" she asks, glancing at Ian before glaring at Mickey. This little overprotective routine might have been nice when they had no idea why Ian was being transferred, but now it's just embarrassing.

"Mandy, it's fine," says Ian as Mickey drops his hand to cross his arms over his chest. All the better to glare back at Mandy.

"Is it?" she asks. "This asshole didn't bring you here to use you, did he? Didn't promise you safety so long as you do what he says?"

Ian burns red, staring at his toes. He might owe Mandy a lot, but he hates that she's bringing this up when Mickey's right fucking here, hates that to Mandy, Mickey is in the same category of People Who Take Advantage of Ian.

"What!" Mickey shouts. "The fuck? Ian, you know I wouldn't— That's not— I don't— Did you think, these last few days, that—“

"No!" says Ian, turning to put himself between Mickey and Mandy. He cradles Mickey's face in his hands, running a thumb over Mickey's cheek. "No, Mickey. Just stop. Know what we have. And so do you."

Mickey nods, but still looks completely horrified. Ian hates Mandy a little bit again, even though he loves her completely. Her goddamn concern is bringing up shit that Ian just can't tell Mickey. Not yet, anyway. Probably not ever.

"It’s okay, Mick. Ignore her,” Ian says before turning to Mandy. “This is Mickey. _My_ Mickey. Come on, Mands. You know all about him. Can trust him."

"He's a fucking guard!" Mandy shouts. When she gets so flustered and angry like this, she reminds him a little bit of Mickey with her incredulous eyebrows and fisted hands.

"So the fuck are you!" Mickey shouts back.

Ian sighs. “Look, you're both my family. So will you please stop yelling at each other and just try to get along? Think you might actually like each other, if you both stop being so goddamn overprotective. All right?"

Neither of them replies, but Mandy looks away and Mickey shrugs. It's the closest to an agreement that Ian's gonna get.

"Hey," he says, bumping Mickey with his shoulder. "How about that tour?"

"I'm coming too," says Mandy.

"Fucking fine. Right this way."

* * *

 

Nine years at Three, and Ian forgot what fresh air smells like.

It didn't take long for the stench of cow, with a hearty side of chicken, to become normal when he transferred there, and after a few weeks he stopped hiding his nose in his shirt just to fall asleep. He got used to it, just like he got used to other things involved with being a prisoner. Slaughter days were different, with blood hanging in the air, but air scented with cow just became normal air after a few weeks at Three.

Eighteen smells clean.

Ian inhales deep, filling his lungs with crisp spring air. Only a few trees are starting to bloom, but Ian swears the air is sweeter out here, laced with fruit and flowers.

Mickey's face is just as refreshing. Under these mostly bare branches, he is glowing. He knows each tree just like he knows each prisoner they've encountered so far. Every few seconds he glances at Ian, as if he is looking for Ian's approval.

And Ian’s not sure he can give it, not while Mickey wears guard’s black, but he smiles back like he does. If nothing else, it’s a thrill to see Mickey so at home somewhere safe, far from his father and full of fruit trees.

Mickey babbles nervously about pruning, and Ian rewrites the life he assumed Mickey had, working his way towards captain. He didn't spend his days beating prisoners to ensure his own promotion. Instead he learned their names and devoted himself to trees.

"What?" mutters Mickey, rubbing his lip, and glancing between Ian and the nearest tree. Mandy appears to be lost behind them in the rows of skeletal branches and Ian enjoys this moment alone with Mickey like he will cherish all moments with Mickey.

"Just... you," Ian says with a wistful sigh.

"Me, what?" asks Mickey, wary.

"You and your fruit."

"Fuck off. Fruit is awesome."

Ian laughs. "Such a sweet tooth."

"Oh yeah, tough guy? Maybe I like 'em sweet."

Ian laughs again. With a hand in the center of Mickey's chest, he pushes him back towards the nearest tree. Mickey's hands are in his hair, tugging him down for a kiss before Ian even manages to press his back into the trunk.

With Mickey's hands in his hair and Mickey's tongue in his mouth, Ian is happy. Really happy, maybe for the first time since he was a teenager, plotting to build a life around Mickey. It's not the frantic thrill of mania or even the contentment of nights with Mandy on the roof back at Three, but real, genuine happiness that makes Ian think he can handle anything, as long as he has Mickey to come back to.

Against his lips, Mickey hums. "Yummy," he says.

The word is just so fucking silly, given that Mickey is a captain and Ian is a prisoner and they are nearly thirty now. So Ian laughs. The sound is almost foreign to his own ears, so young and light. He kisses Mickey again, running his hands down his sides. Today there is no gun at his hip.

Ian keeps Mickey pressed against a tree, kissing him like its possible to make up for all those years apart, until Mandy stumbles upon them, making pretend puking sounds and then bitching about the perils of getting momentarily lost in the wilderness.

"There's no wilderness. It's a goddamn orchard," Mickey snaps, reaching up to fix the damage he did to Ian's hair before stomping off between rows of trees.

* * *

"Ian, _look_."

Ethel's hand is warm on his elbow as she directs his gaze to the bins of dirt she keeps stored in the back of her greenhouse. After weeks of getting hauled around by guards, hit, shoved, Ethel's gentle touch is a relief.

He's holding it together here at Seventeen, and it's easier to simply survive now that getting out of bed is no longer so fucking exhausting.

Plus, Ethel's taken him under her wing and she lets him be when he needs a moment, when a particularly perfect tomato makes Ian think of Mickey and cry. She's a prisoner too, but she’s in charge of her own greenhouse anyway. That’s definitely against the rules, but Ethel’s such a talented grower that it would be stupid as all fuck to waste her.

It’s his first bit of luck in a long time, getting Ethel as his supervisor, and he spends his days following her around, lifting heavy things because she's tiny and doing as she says.   The work is the best he can hope for, given that he's already been thrown in The Shed twice since he got taken to Seventeen a month and a half ago.

"See dirt," says Ian as he stares at Ethel's bins of dirt.

Ethel laughs, the sound tinkling and bright. Most things about Ethel are bright, her perfectly smooth pale skin, the soft waves of her light brown hair, her presence that is both commanding and soothing at once. When he was a kid he would close his eyes and pretend to have a mother. If he did the same now, she'd be just like Ethel.

"It's not just dirt," says Ethel. " _Really_ look."

Ian bites back a sigh of annoyance and does as she says. "It's wiggling," he says after a moment’s observation.

"Yes!" she says, digging her perpetually dirt-stained hands into the soil. "Red worms," she says, beaming as she shows off the creatures now wiggling in her hands. "It's a good crop this year. These will go in the outdoor fields. For the corn."

"Cool," Ian says, surprised that he means it. Mickey would love it here, would love these worms, and Ian feels this strange obligation to enjoy these things like Mickey would enjoy them. To enjoy them for Mickey, like he would if he were here.

Ethel returns the worms to the bin and together they start putting on the lids. Ian carries as many as he can at once, trailing behind Ethel as she leads him outside to the horse drawn cart that will drag the whole thing over to the fields.

"Love spring," Ethel says, tilting her face towards the sun and breathing in deep.

Mickey would love Ethel and Ian feels guilty for wishing Mickey were here with him. He'd never want this for Mickey, not even if he'd love the greenhouse and the worms and Ethel herself.

* * *

 

They’re in bed with the lights out by ten because Mickey somehow understands that Ian needs a routine, complete with a full night’s sleep. Last night, too, he insisted that they go to bed at a reasonable time, even when they have so much to say to each other, to do with each other, after too many years apart.

Routine is important. Getting at least eight hours of sleep is important. Even knowing that his stability depends on these things, he stays awake a little longer, hesitating to close his eyes and stop looking at Mickey.

“So that was a day in the life of Mickey, huh?” Ian says, propping his head up on his elbow to better gaze at Mickey. There is enough moonlight coming in through the window to make out Mickey’s lips, to see his eye gleaming as he blinks them open.

“A slow as hell day, maybe,” Mickey replies. “You were a total distraction in the sewing room. Gotta make up the productivity tomorrow.”

“Can’t believe this whole time you’ve been making clothes for all the sections.”

“And Chicago, too.”

“Think you sewed my clothes?”

“You ain’t wearing any clothes.”

Ian laughs and sprawls out on Mickey’s chest. He hums when Mickey runs his fingers through his hair.

“Don’t do much sewing myself,” Mickey confesses to Ian’s temple.

“No prisoner work for you?” Ian asks. Yes, he did see with his own eyes, people in brown and people in black sitting together at long tables, stitching by hand or working machines, but he still can’t quite get his head around how different it is here. There is no apparent prisoner work and guard work, everyone talks to Mickey the same, talks to Ian the same, as if they are liked and respected for reasons that have nothing to do with Mickey’s black clothes and Ian’s brown.

It remains unfathomable.

“Hey, I basically live in the orchard, thank you very fucking much,” replies Mickey, kicking playfully at Ian’s shin. “But sewing ain’t my thing. Karen’s booted me out more than once saying I’ve got incompetent sausage fingers.”

Ian huffs, searching around in the dark until he finds said fingers, bringing them to his lips. “What does she know? These fingers are miracles.”

“Fuck, I missed you.”

Ian presses kisses into Mickey’s chest.

"It's great, Mick," Ian murmurs. "And it's yours. Like a home, or something."

Mickey hums, his lips at Ian's temple. "Home now, maybe. With you here."

He ignores the lurch in his stomach. Eventually, Mickey is going to see that the Ian that got taken is not the same one returned to him. Maybe Ian won’t feel like home to Mickey when all the cracks show, but at least he does now.

"Could be your home, too," Mickey says. "If you want."

Ian smiles, only rolling his eyes a little bit. Ian’s a prisoner. They don't get to do things "if they want," but how could Mickey understand that.

"What? You think I'm gonna wanna transfer back to Three? It's not like I've got a lot of options, here, but Eighteen with you seems like a pretty damn amazing one."

Sighing, Mickey sits up slightly. Ian gets jostled, glaring up at Mickey as he’s forced to resettle.

"That's not entirely true," Mickey confesses.

"What?" Ian asks, bracing himself to hear about the dark underbelly of Eighteen. He knew this place was too fucking good to be true.

“You’ve got options.”

 _Options._ It’s a dull, vague memory, what it felt like to have options, to make his own choices and control his own life.

“Oh,” is all he can say.

After that, Ian chases sleep. It’s so much easier to close his eyes than to think on these terrifying _options_ Mickey’s laid out before them.

* * *

 

In the summer after he gets taken, Ian convinces himself it was all a one time thing, a strange, traumatic phenomenon. An aberration that lost him everything.

The doctor back home said bipolar, but in the summer Ian feels steady. The depression that made it impossible to do anything but lie curled up in a ball feels far away. After just a couple of months, Ian cannot recall what it actually felt like to be that low. It seems impossible that he'll ever slip there again.

The mania doesn’t feel real, either.

In his memories it was some other kid that dug up their backyard last winter and was sleeping only an hour or two a night.

Someone else made Lip pace around the living room, running his hands through his hair over and over again like he does when he's stressed.

It was someone else that needed to touch Mickey constantly, over and over all day and all night until, for the first time ever since they first had sex at age fifteen, Mickey said _no, Ian, I'm fucking exhausted._ It was some other kid that pleaded with Mickey anyway, who yelled at Mickey when he said no again, who kept pushing until Mickey yelled back, _you're gonna hurt me, asshole! Lay off._

Someone else started running miles and miles and miles all night after that instead, even if it was a poor replacement for that frantic, buzzing energy compared to Mickey’s skin.

Ian can focus now. When Ethel gives him a task, he can accomplish it without being distracted by all the thoughts speeding through his head, tempting him to follow one before getting distracted by the other.

What that doctor would call mania was actually just a weird moment, brought on by the stress of finishing school and the prospect of being forced to have kids. The depression was just sleep deprivation that got so much worse with the realization that he’d never see his family again.

Obviously it won't happen again.

And in the late fall, when is seems to be happening again, Ian won't admit it. Not even in the privacy of his racing mind.

Every night he sneaks out after hours, an offense punishable by The Shed.

Ethel frowns when Ian accomplishes task after task with too much speed and not enough accuracy.

He jerks off everywhere and sometimes talks to Mickey and Lip like they’re here with him. Sometimes he forgets that they’re not.

He has a great, genius epiphany on how to escape and gets distracted by collecting new worms for Ethel in the woods.

When the word _bipolar_ flits through his head, Ian ignores it.

This feels good. This feels invincible. He can run all night and help Ethel all day and most of all the speed and the energy makes it hard to focus on how much he misses Mickey, misses Lip.

So what, if out here he'll never get the medication his doctor was so sure he needs? This is better. With his mind like this, he'll not only survive Seventeen, but he’ll flourish.

He’ll live more than anyone else out here is living.

* * *

 

Tonight Ian runs through the woods.

His heavy work boots slow him down, so he pauses to slip them off his feet, tying the laces together and slinging them over his neck. The earth is frozen under his toes, and rocks, twigs, and roots might poke him but the soles of his feet are tough. The boots hit uncomfortable against his chest as he runs, but the thudding just adds to the rhythm of his pace.

He likes the way these woods smell. They remind him of being a kid and always being the one to find Mickey because Lip is good at a lot of things but Hide and Seek was never one of them.

Before him, shinning through dense layers of leaves, lights appear. They are brighter than stars and closer, but not that close. Light that beautiful has to mean angles, has to mean salvation, and Ian runs faster, ignoring the sharp slice of a rock under his foot.

When he bursts through the edge of the woods he expects to be greeted by heavenly bodies and holy choruses, maybe Mickey or Lip too, but the night stays quiet.

Ian stops and stares for a long time before he understands what he’s actually looking at. It's just some buildings, illuminated by floodlights. For a moment he thinks he got turned around and ended up circling back to Seventeen. The main building and pad might be the same, but there is only one greenhouse here instead of a whole fleet of them and to the right there are neat lines of trees, not the chaos of the woods but the structure of an orchard.

This is another section, maybe Eighteen, if the sections are numbered in order.

There is nothing heavenly here, just more of the same. Maybe even worse. He knows how to survive Seventeen, now, but this place is different, crueler. Those lights didn’t mean salvation, but were tricking him, bringing him here now that he’s finally learned to survive where he is.

Ian backs up slow, towards the safety of the woods, careful not to alert anyone here at this new, scary place, to his presence.

Ian turns on his heel and runs back the way he came, going faster to beat out the thoughts of the family he left behind.

* * *

 

"You're one of the Good Guards," Ian murmurs, somewhat in awe. Today, when Malik the newbie cut himself on a saw, Mickey did not yell or punish him for being stupid enough to get hurt. Instead he was gentle, examining Malik’s hand, murmuring _accidents happen_ and _this cut ain’t so bad_. He walked Malik to the infirmary himself.

And Ian knows that it’s different here. Knows it’s different because Mickey says it’s different, but it still feels like a swift kick in the chest whenever he sees the proof. He’s still stunned, all these hours later as he lies in bed, watching Mickey putter around his room.

He’s been here a week, and has been too busy watching Mickey to make any decisions or consider any choices.

On that third night, Mickey presented two equally risky options; join Lip in Boston and forget The Farmland exists, or stay and revolt, as Mickey’s been plotting for years. It is The Big Question, fight or flee. Stay here and see out the revolution. Run east and live quietly in Boston with Lip.

When Ian asked what Mickey wanted, he said that he didn’t fucking know. He said that he was hoping they could figure it out together. And anything they do together sounds good to Ian, except he’s not good at making decisions. Hasn’t gotten to do it very often, not in the last eleven years.

Each option goes against everything Ian’s learned about survival in the last decade. Either path is too risky and could end with Mickey getting taken from him again, so he doesn’t think about it.

Ian’s forgotten how to trust himself with _decisions_ , so he decides not to decide.

How does Mickey expect Ian to consider his options and make decisions when he’s wandering around, looking like that, showing genuine concern for a bleeding newbie?

"Good Guard?" Mickey asks, cracking a smile. He peels off his guard black clothes, crawling into bed beside Ian and sitting up against the wall.

"Yeah," Ian replies, shrugging. "Never heard that phrase before? M and the Good Guards.”

Mickey winces. “Fuck. No.”

“My friend, Iggy, he was the big time follower of M at Three. Transferred from One and was always talking about the Good Guards he knew there. Secretly helping instead of hurting. Secretly changing things. Really liked the idea of it at first, but years passed and nothing got any better. Kinda gave up, started telling Iggy to shut his fucking mouth when he really got going. Thought Mandy was the only good guard in the whole fucking Farmland. That didn't have anything to do with the revolution though."

Talking about Three makes his throat dry, makes his heart race, and, worst of all, puts that look on Mickey’s face.

Mickey nods as if he could possibly understand what the guards have done to Ian over the years. Mickey's mapped out the scars on Ian's skin, the strange star bursts left by stun guns and other lines where they drew blood, but he could never really understand what it felt like. Even knowing Mickey is Mickey, knowing that he's different, Ian still feels that little flare of hate and fear when he sees Mickey in black.

“That’s my fault,” Mickey murmurs, messing with the blanket in his lap.   “That it took so long, that you were in a place with no Good Guards.”

“Stop,” Ian says, reaching up and tugging on Mickey’s arm until he gets the hint and lies down, turning so he’s face to face with Ian. “Not your fault. You did so good, Mickey.”

"You still feel that way?" he asks, running his hand through Ian's hair. "No Good Guards except Mandy?"

"No," says Ian and he doesn't want it to be a lie. He won't let it be a lie, not with Mickey in black.

* * *

 

Some nights, the joy of being reunited cannot overcome the pain of being apart.

Some nights it’s Ian who gets quiet, too wrapped up in bad memories and guilt, but tonight it’s Mickey, frowning at Ian's skin as he traces the many scars he finds there.

He studies Ian's hands intently, the pale palms marred with hundreds of little nicks. There is only one scar on his hand that was intentional, and it remains the deepest and the darkest scar, but the rest are from a knife blade too. Ian worked as a butcher for years, slicing up already dead flesh, and when his mind wandered, his hands got cut.

In a hushed whisper, Ian explains this to Mickey, assures him that these are the marks of a neglectful butcher and nothing more sinister.

The scars on his chest and back cannot be explained away so easily. There is nothing to say that would wipe clean Mickey's grimace as he props himself up on one elbow, fingertips outlining the starburst patterns on Ian's stomach and chest. These marks have faded in the years since he got on his meds and was better able to avoid the stun gun, but they remain red and noticeable, contrasted with his pale skin.

"Stun guns," Ian murmurs because after weeks here with Mickey he's finally ready to share the smallest parts of the last eleven years. Maybe knowing for sure will make Mickey stop grimacing. "Got 'um all over," he says, like Mickey hasn't seen him naked countless times.

"Noticed," Mickey replies. It sounds like he has a hard time forcing the words from his throat. "Never want to touch a fucking gun again."

Ian smiles soft, although Mickey misses it, too busy tracing old marks on Ian's skin. There are more on his back, lashes from that time he tried to run away or maybe that other time he tried to run away, more starbursts that seemingly mark every day he couldn't get up for work, every time he was drown by depression with no benevolent guard to let him rest, every time he was too enthralled by mania to focus on the right task.

He doesn't turn over, doesn't need to remind Mickey of scars he's already seen.

"Most prisoners get the gun, The Shed, a few lashes, just once. Just one punishment and they learn,” Ian murmurs. “But I couldn't fucking learn, not for a long time."

"Fuck," says Mickey.

“Don’t be sad,” Ian whispers, shuffling closer, pressing a kiss to Mickey’s chin. “I’m okay. Okay, now. “

It’s the truth, at least for this moment. Eventually the risk of revolution or the risk of leaving or the risk of losing Mickey or the risk of his meds crapping out will catch up with them.

But right now, it’s okay, better than, with Mickey’s lips gentle against his.

* * *

 

When he gets back to Seventeen, he emerges from the woods and bumps right into a guard. He knows the patrol times, but tonight he ran too far following white lights and shadows at the edge of his vision. The timing is off.

"What the fuck?" demands the guard, pulling his gun from his hip and pointing it at Ian's chest.

Hands up, Ian tries not to shake apart. "Sorry!" he says, dropping his gaze to his feet. Guards like that, when prisoners are so submissive, they won't even look up. "I'm sorry!"

"You trying to escape?" The guard steps closer and Ian gets a glimpse of his vaguely familiar face before the guard blinds him with a flashlight. No heavenly light, no angels, just a flashlight and danger.

"No!" replies Ian, wondering if he should run, wondering if he could wrestle that gun from the guard’s grip, wondering how to best stay safe. "Promise, I wasn't. Just couldn't sleep, went for a jog. Needed to burn off some energy."

"The fuck should I believe you, huh?"

Ian is made blind by the sharp light cutting through the night but he can hear the sneer in the guard's tone.

"Was coming out of the woods," he attempts to explain. "Not going into them."

"Still out of bounds and after curfew, too."

Ian can't really deny it. He just closes his eyes and awaits the familiar crackle of the stun gun. He’s given up on the angels. Before him they turned back to buildings, brought him so far away and made this bearable place bad again, got him caught.

"Going to The Shed," the guard decides.

And Ian fucking panics.

"No!" He surges forward, grabbing the guard's hands, getting the light out of his eyes. "Please, not The Shed. Anything but that. Hit me, stun me, just not The Shed. Anything but that. Anything."

The guard looks a little stunned by Ian's desperation, but Ian doesn't care. He can't fucking go to The Shed, not when all this frantic energy pulses in his veins. The enclosed space and darkness really will kill him before he can manage to claw his way out.

This close, Ian can really see the guards face now. He doesn't work in the greenhouses, so Ian doesn't know his name, but he might have been one of the many guards to toss him in The Shed when he first arrived.

The guard stares at Ian and Ian just tries to catch his breath, still very seriously considering taking off into the woods. He's in there every night. Surely he could lose the guard in those twisted branches.

But there is no salvation in the woods, no angelic lights, just more of the same and maybe even worse.

Smirking now, the guard takes a step closer, his breath warm on Ian's face, visible in the cold air.

"Really don't want to go to The Shed, huh?" he asks.

Ian shakes his head, his brain rattling around in his skull.

"Bet you'd do anything to stay outta there, huh?"

Ian nods, trying to brace himself for a blow or the stun gun.

Instead the guard steps even closer, pressing his body against Ian's. They are nearly the same height and Ian has no choice but to look him in the eye.

"You'd do anything," the guard says again. He's still smirking, licking the corner of his mouth. " _Anything_?"

Ian finally gets it when the guard presses his half-hard dick into his thigh, looking down significantly.

“Oh,” Ian says, blinking for a moment. He drops his boots to the ground at his side, and then goes to his knees.

* * *

 

Touching Mickey becomes his number one priority.

It's necessary, after eleven years of going without. Sometimes Ian still doesn't trust his own eyes and when he watches Mickey climb a tree or settle some dispute between prisoners or argue with Shelia about buttons, he thinks this might not be real. The shocking turn his life has taken is too good and too big. Watching isn't enough to make him believe it. Touching is better.

Mickey seems to feel the same. He sticks close to Ian, standing so their arms brush even as he discusses summer plans for the orchard with people who are equally obsessed with trees. He leads Ian around the section, lacing their fingers together or resting a hand on the small of Ian's back.

There is only one real rule at Eighteen, and it is work hard. Do what you can to keep Pop Com away. At some point he'll have to start trying out some different jobs like Mandy is, but for now he needs to just be close to Mickey.

It’s a joy and a shock to watch Mickey work. While Captain Ned of Three spent his time eating fancy, lounging around, and fucking young prisoners, Mickey knows every corner of Eighteen, knows every job that needs doing and every person who does it, their capabilities and their limitations. Mickey is a leader not because of his title, because the people here respect him and trust him.

And Ian’s really fucking proud.

Today the rain forced them inside, much to Mickey's dismay. So Mickey sits close on the couch in his office, typing away on his tablet and muttering curses under his breath, real captain work or treason. Ian doesn’t ask.

Instead he reads a real, actual book. The hard cover and thick paper pages are heavy in his hands. It's been so fucking long since he even touched a book or had the free time to read anything except Doc B’s letters. His eyes aren't used to doing something so small for so long, and he can only keep it up for an hour at a time before his temples start to throb. If he pouts about his headache Mickey will read it to him, his voice a low, soothing rumble as Ian closes his eyes and lies with his head on Mickey's chest.

Maybe later. For now his eyes are holding up fine.

"What?" Ian asks when he realizes that Mickey is no longer grumbling at his tablet. It lays discarded on the couch and Mickey is just staring at him.

"Just love you a lot," Mickey murmurs.

Ian's heart jerks up into his throat, surprised when he shouldn't be. Always surprised, even if Mickey says it and acts it out all the time.

"Yeah?" Ian whispers.

And Mickey nods, still looking like he's a moment away from crawling into Ian's lap to better kiss him.

That's another reason to spend his days following Mickey around. There is always a tree around for pinning Mickey against. There is always a supply shed for exchanging quick, messy blowjobs. There is always somewhere to catch a private moment, for all the touching to go from innocent to heated.

On occasion, when he only has his eyes to tell him that Mickey's real, he wonders if this is slipping back into old unhealthy, patterns. Forgotten faces and hot hands, the wrong hands. Aching for Mickey when it was over but doing it all again anyway, because he needed to stay safe, because he needed it and absolutely didn’t want it all at once.

Doc B would advise proceeding with caution. Probably. He hasn't found the courage to write her since arriving at Eighteen. He doesn’t know where to start.

With Mickey across the room or up a tree, Ian stops trusting himself to recognize if he is using Mickey somehow, or getting used by him or if this need to be so close is mania creeping back up on him.

But then Mickey gets closer. He looks at Ian softly and he touches Ian like he knows him. He laughs freely and holds Ian's hand and gladly answers all of Ian's questions on how Eighteen manages to be productive and make people feel free at the same time. He doesn't pressure Ian to talk about the last miserable eleven years, doesn't pressure Ian for anything. Mickey understands that Ian needs routine and exercise and good nights sleep without Ian having to explain.

Mostly, Mickey really just loves him. And Ian loves him back.

Mickey sighs and does not crawl into Ian’s lap. Instead he runs his hands through his hair and then lets his head drop, hanging down between his knees.

"Hey," says Ian, rubbing his back. "Hey."

"Don't know when it changed," Mickey says.

"What changed?"

Mickey stares at his feet for a while before sitting up and turning to face him on the couch. Mickey's knee presses into Ian's thigh, and he keeps touching Mickey's back, running up his neck and back down his spine.

"Came out here to get you somewhere safe," Mickey says. "That was the goal when I became a guard. That's it."

Ian bites his tongue to keep from arguing. He manages to refrain because there were countless moments over the last decade when he could've used some protecting, some safety.

"So to do that," Mickey continues, "looked for you the best I could and got roped in to bringing down the system that stole you. But there was still that one goal, you know? Revolting was still about finding you. Don't know when it changed. Somewhere along the line it became about finding you and liberating everyone else, too.”

“Oh, Mick.” Heart hurting, he touches Mickey’s hair.

“When I first got out here, was so fucking angry, and I’d rant about burning down the whole fucking system just to get to you. But then it started happening around me and it took me so fucking long to find you and here we are.”

“How serious is this supposed revolution you got yourself into?”

Mickey says revolt, says break the rules, says burn the whole thing down, and Ian is back shivering on the cold floor of The Shed, somehow summoning the energy to give a handjob so he can sleep instead of work, and wincing as he pulls a rough brown shirt over a raw sunburst wound from a stun gun.

But he wants it anyway, wants revolution and rules broken and the whole thing burned to the ground.

“Pretty fucking serious, man,” Mickey says, still talking to the floor. “Just gotta figure out what to do with Three. That’s one big, scary section you found yourself in. But we’re close. So fucking close, Ian.”

"You wanna stay," Ian murmurs, still rubbing the back of Mickey's neck, still not really believing it could be done.

It'll be a fucking relief, if Mickey takes this decision out of Ian's hands. He doesn’t remember how and besides a few glorious moments when he chose to get medicated, when he choose to stop fucking Ned, he has made very few decisions for himself since he was seventeen.

But here at Eighteen he is not a prisoner. He gets a vote in this. Mickey's been pretty fucking clear about that.

"Eh," says Mickey, sitting up now, shrugging. "Maybe? Fuck, man. I don’t know. Think I really want to go live happy ever after with Yev and Lip. Meet Fiona’s kid. Get you somewhere _actually_ safe. Stay so fucking far from those Pop Com fuckers. But feels like I should stay. It's important work, you know? But you’re more important. You and me together, that’s more important."

Ian wraps his arms around Mickey, tucking his face into his neck and nodding.

"I'm fucking torn. Don't know the right call. What're you leaning towards?"

"Dunno," Ian confesses. "Can I think about it?"

Mickey pulls away, frowning down at Ian. "Haven't you been thinking about it?"

"Mostly just been thinking about you."

Mickey smirks and Ian bites that lip before kissing him deeply. It's so fucking good, to be distracted from hard decisions by how easy it is to love Mickey.

"Promise you'll think about it," Mickey says, voice hoarse, nearly as distracted as Ian.

"Promise," Ian says.

And Mickey's finally crawling into his lap.

* * *

 

His name is Roger and it feels like cheating.

Instead of spending his nights running through the woods, he sneaks into Roger's room in the guard's wing through the back staircase. It's good timing, too, because snow is falling deep now, Ian shoveling a path in front of Ethel to the greenhouse every morning. There is too much of it to run.

Roger is nice. Roger is fine. Roger even apologizes for that first time.

“Sorry, man. Don’t know what I was thinking, basically forcing you to do that. Been out here too long. Think it’s fucked me up. You don’t gotta keep it up if you don’t wanna. Ain’t gonna tell anyone, throw you in The Shed or anything.”

That first time when Roger caught him coming out of the woods, Ian threw up immediately after, horrified that he cut one more tie to Mickey. Before, there was only Mickey and now there is Mickey and Roger.

Nausea bubbles in his stomach, but he swallows it back, giving Roger a smirk instead. "Way better than The Shed. Kinda fun, actually."

Roger does not sleep much, either. Sometimes he talks about a best friend, getting taken fifteen years ago. He signed up to guard a year after, to come look for her, but has long since given up that fantasy. There are too many places to look and no way to do it. He talks about a best friend and Ian wonders if that’s what keeps him up at night. If that’s what he needs a distraction from, like Ian needs a distraction from mourning his family.

Sometimes, when Roger can’t talk about a best friend anymore, he looks to Ian like it’s his turn to share. Ian never does though. Mickey and Lip and the life he lost are sacred, too precious to whisper in this guard’s ear as they lie naked in his bed.

Sneaking into Roger’s room practically turned into a nightly ritual. The more Ian gets it, the more he needs it, and Roger yawns his way through breakfast but he doesn't complain about late nights and interrupted dreams.

Roger is attractive and fun and not that old. And Ian lost Mickey the moment he took a knife to the palm of his hand. But it still feels like cheating when Ian slows down enough to think about Mickey.

So Ian makes sure to never slow down.

* * *

 

Ian’s slowing down, like a top just before it stops spinning. He can’t come up with a single way to delay the inevitable moment that he’ll tip over.

Roger still likes him, at least. Maybe he’ll let Ian stay in his room, in his bed, when he is too exhausted to fuck or work or even get up.

It’s his only shot, really, at staying out of The Shed and avoiding the gun.

Roger is his only shot, so when the guard approaches him before dinner, as he’s lingering alone in the shower, Ian doesn’t say no. He does not remind Roger of the risks of getting caught. He does not say wait until tonight, when the lights are out and no one can see.

Roger is his only shot, so he gets to his knees.

And of course they get caught.

And of course its not some fellow prisoner that Roger could effectively terrorize into silence. Of course it’s a guard, the second overseer, well known for his violence and his homophobia.

Ian stares at his feet as Roger claims innocence, claims Ian attacked him, seduced him. _It gets lonely out here without a woman_ , says Roger, _it wasn’t my fault it wasn’t my fault._

And of course Ian gets The Shed. He’s there for two miserable days before they kick him out of Seventeen completely.

* * *

 

The guards who greet him at Three know just what he did to get transferred. And when they touch him, ply him with alcohol, pass him around, Ian doesn't protest, doubts his protests would even matter. These guards are not Roger. They wouldn’t hear the word no when it falls from the lips of prisoners.

It doesn't matter. Ian doesn't care. This body doesn't feel like his anymore, and at least he has somewhere warm to sleep.

* * *

 

The prisoners at Three seem to know just what he did to get transferred, too. They sneer at him, call him names that he hasn't heard since he was a little kid and Terry was drunk, ranting about those filthy faggots ruining the glorious mission to save the population.

It’s not the gay thing as much, but the being with a guard thing, that really seems to have his fellow prisoners at Three hating him. At Seventeen, there were a handful of guards who were kind, who were well liked. Here, they are only The Enemy and Ian’s guilty of fraternizing with them.

He keeps to himself, eats alone at the end of a table in the cafeteria, and tries not to vomit when he gets his work assignment. They teach him how to cut the throats of cows and break the necks of chickens.

At night, when he’s alone in his own cot for once, he bites his pillow to keep his crying silent.

* * *

 

"Hey," says Mandy, flopping down on the couch next to Ian, so close that she practically falls into his lap. Out of habit he slings an arm over her shoulder.

"Hey," he replies.

Before Mandy's arrival he'd been staring at Karen and Paco, playing the slowest game of chess possible, and his best friend is a welcome relief from the thoughts consuming him all day.

With Mickey off doing some captain bullshit and dinner not yet ready and Ian promising to think about it, the only thing on his mind is The Big Question. Fight or flee. Lip or everyone else. Stay or go. A risk or a different risk.

"You know the guards work the same as the prisoners?" Mandy says. "This prisoner, Dottie, she's in charge of an entire hydroponic grow house. Guess what they’re growing?"

"Tomatoes," Ian answers, voice flat.

Mandy narrows her eyes, and Ian hates that he knows what's going on in her head right now. She's trying to figure out if Ian is just cranky, or if his snappiness means something else, something worse. This time, she doesn't mention anything even bipolar adjacent, continuing on with the exploits of her day.

"Marijuana," she says with a delighted giggle. "The whole fucking warehouse. Brand new facility, too. Built it last year. Apparently Pop Com thinks its full of spinach. Spinach! Don't know how they get away with it, but they do, somehow. Just rows and rows of glorious weed. No wonder they were always so eager to trade for my booze."

Ian sniffs and snickers. "You reek. Smell's in your hair."

"Fuck you, I smell so divine."

Ian rolls his eyes.

"Dottie said I could train there, work with her," Mandy says, suddenly shy, "Might actually learn something. Sure beats watching assholes chop up cows and pluck chickens."

"Sure does."

"What'd you do today? Any jobs catch your eye yet?”

Ian shrugs. Mostly he’s just followed Mickey around in the orchard, listening with half an ear as Mickey detailed the work Ian could do. The options for work are endless – orchard, fields, grow house, cafeteria, sewing room, infrastructure repair, stables, laundry – but none of it will matter until they choose between the life options, stay or go, flee or fight.

All the choices are so many more then he’s ever had before. Overwhelmed, he breathes like Doc B taught him, counting measured breathes as he inhales the familiar aroma of Mandy's pot-infused hair.

"Lip's in Boston."

"What?" Mandy sits up, pulling away and turning sideways on the couch to face him. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. Mickey did it somehow. Been talking to him, actually. Since we got here. He invented some hidden instant messenger. Been in touch with Mickey for awhile, I guess."

Mandy shakes her head, whistling between her teeth. "Damn. That man of yours is fucking resourceful. Your brother, too."

And Ian tells her exactly how resourceful Mickey is, not just with smuggling the people he loves to somewhere safe, but the long-coming revolution that he's been quietly leading and expanding for years, right under Pop Com's fucking nose.   Even though every single person in this section is in on it, Ian keeps his voice low.

Mickey talks with no fear of being overheard here at Eighteen. Ian will probably never be that comfortable anywhere.

Mandy's eyes go wide and then wider, her eyebrows high and then higher, as Ian confirms that almost everything Iggy ever said about the movement was true, only vaster than anything they imagined at Three.

"They got guards in every section," he continues. "Captains in thirteen. Between 75 and 85 percent of the prisoner population, as far as they can tell. Basically they’re just waiting to secure Three before they all make their move."

"What move?" Mandy whispers.

Ian shrugs, still a little unclear on this part of Mickey's grand plan. It probably depends of which of these two options – flee or fight, stay or go – they settle on.

"He says we can leave." This part, Ian does whisper directly into Mandy's ear specially to keep the others from hearing. "Go live with Lip in Boston. Just... leave and not look back."

"You should," Mandy hisses back. This is the exact opposite of what Ian thought she'd say. "Fuck everyone else. You deserve a little fucking peace. Seriously, fuck this place."

Mandy is fierce, eyes blazing, ready to argue for what Ian deserves until even Ian believes it, but when she gets a look at his stricken face she softens a little.

“Will fucking miss you, fucking hate it,” she whispers in his ear. “But you’re my family and I want you happy, want you healthy. If that’s gonna happen with a move to Boston, I’ll be okay here. Knowing you’re safe, learning weed with Dottie, it’ll be enough for me. Maybe I’ll even get in on this revolution. Kick some Pop Com ass.”

It appeases him, somewhat, to hear Mandy call him family. Of all the hard parts of striking out east, leaving Mandy would be the worst. Like he has to trade in his sister to see his brother again.

If Mandy knew him back before The Farmland, before he’d ever heard the word bipolar, would she still give this advice? If she knew Ian when he was righteously angry instead of exhausted and defeated, would she still say go? It used to be Ian with the spirit of a revolutionary, ready to tear apart the whole system if it meant he and Mickey could build the life they wanted.

If he ignores Mandy’s advice and stays, could he be like that again?

“Maybe everyone deserves a little peace,” Ian murmurs into her pot stained hair.

* * *

 

Ian is an avid consumer of Mickey and Yevgeny stories. Even if the kid was taken at twelve and Ian ruined Mickey’s shot at having kids of his own when they were seventeen, these stories are genuinely happy, somehow, despite the fucked up circumstances.  

He’s never seen Mickey look so bashful as he does when Ian learns that Yev wouldn’t talk to anyone but Mickey until he was fourteen, learns that Mickey and Vee broke down the wall between the closets in their rooms with sledgehammers to build Yev a bedroom of his own only a week after he got to Eighteen.

Today, it’s Karen telling the story.   He might not like Karen all that much, but the work in the fields today was hard and his shoulders ache pleasantly. Mickey is drinking lemonade instead of liquor, sitting close with an arm thrown around Ian’s chair, and this story is a good one. A breeze cools his sun-pinked cheeks, and Ian breathes in deep, enjoying the clean air.

The evening is nearly perfect and Ian remembers that there are good things in the world, things worth the risk, things worth protecting.

“So Yev throws a hissy fit, climbs a tree, refuses to come down,” Karen says, making Mickey chuckle and Beto shake his head. Ian’s been grinning since the topic of Yev came up and doesn’t see himself stopping anytime soon. “Mickey ends up sitting at the base of the tree, determined to wait Yev out, but he falls asleep and we find them both in the morning, snoozing on the ground in a weird pile of limbs and leaves and dirt. Think Vee still has a picture somewhere.”

“Love to see that,” Ian says. “What Yev have a fit over?”

“Dunno,” Mickey says, shrugging. “Probably his homework. He was a very stubborn preteen. A lot of fucking hissy fits.”

Ian laughs, wanting another story, wanting all the stories, and it looks like Beto is opening his mouth to tell one when Mandy comes around the corner of the building, stomping over to stand before Mickey.

"Get the fuck up," Mandy demands, scowling down at Mickey where he sits sprawled out in a rickety chair.

The last thing Ian wants is for anyone to get the fuck up, not when there are more stories to hear. The evening has finally cooled off and he plans to keep sitting so close to Mickey, thighs pressed together, Mickey absently playing with the hair at the back of his head, until bedtime.

Mandy is ruining it, with her demand that Mickey get the fuck up.

"Mean it," she continues when Mickey does nothing but recline a little further in his seat and raise an eyebrow. The antagonism between the two has only grown in the last few weeks. It makes Ian’s head hurt. "Come on," she says, kicking at the bottom of Mickey's boot.

"Just take a seat, Mands. Catch the last bit of this sunset," Ian suggests.

Mandy starts shaking her head before Ian finishes speaking. "Nope. Me and your man are gonna get drunk and bond."

"Are we?" asks Mickey, snorting.

Ian just groans. He is not a big fan of the Drunk Mickey stories. And there sure seems to be a lot of them.

"Got clear liquor," Mandy says, producing a bottle from behind her back.

Mickey glances between Ian and the bottle of booze that Mandy is waggling around, doing her best to make it alluring, before he stands, sighing heavily. "Fucking fine," Mickey says. "Can't guarantee any bonding."

“Take it easy with that stuff,” Ian says, not quite pouting.

“Yes, dear.”

Mandy rolls her eyes and Mickey bends to press a kiss into Ian's temple.

Mickey stopped asking Ian if he was all right whenever Mickey had to leave him for even a few minutes – after Ian reminded him that he's no incompetent child in rather loud and colorful language – but being apart is still unpleasant. Ian is still not entirely convinced that this is his to keep. Every time Mickey isn't directly in his line of sight, Ian’s stomach bubbles with nerves.

As Mickey and Mandy disappear around the corner of the building, Mickey already drinking from the bottle, Karen lights up a joint. Ian's said no enough times that she’s stopped offering. "You look kinda freaked out," she observes.

"Not," Ian replies. He's worried that without him to mediate they'll end up hating each other even more, but he certainly is not freaked out.

"Who you worried about?" Karen asks, blowing smoke out of her nostrils. "Him or her?"

"Neither," decides Ian. "Both."

Karen laughs. "Our captain will handle it just fine. He always does."

"How'd he do it?" Ian asks. "People like him don't become captain."

"That," says Karen, "just ain't true anymore. But Mickey's special. Gives a shit. Sure he lucked out and the old captain thought he was fucking hilarious, so that helped. But mostly he got the captain commission because he works harder, inspires people to work harder too, and gives a shit."

“He’s a good leader,” Beto contributes. “Has vision.”

“Wow,” Ian murmurs. Ian’s not the only one to have changed drastically in the last decade, not when Mickey has so much vision. “Guess he really does.”

With Mickey off with Ian’s best friend, the evening gets a lot less perfect. He could see if Lip’s online, bask in the joy that is having books to read again, or actually make a decision – fight or flee, revolt or run – now that his night is suddenly and unfortunately free.

“So what’s Mandy’s deal?” Karen says, halting Ian’s departure.

“Deal?”

"Does she like girls, Ian," Karen says, rolling her eyes.

Ian doesn't bother to hide his surprise. "You interested?"

"Maybe," Karen draws out the syllables of the word as she plays with her hair. "So what's her deal?"

Mandy is one of the most private people he's ever met. He put in hours, _years,_ on the roof to become Mandy's only confidant and best friend. No way he is going to betray her trust like that over some prisoner who seems to get great joy out of irritating both Mandy and Mickey.

"Ask her yourself," Ian says.

"But we don't ask each other things," Karen whines. "That's not how we are."

"You hate each other," Ian says.

"There is a fine line between hatred and really great sex," Karen says, glancing at Beto who nods along like some silent, wise asshole.

Ian sighs, staring at the spot at the edge of the building where Mickey disappeared a few minutes ago. "Wouldn't know."

"Never seen him smile so much," Karen muses, once more halting Ian’s departure.

"Huh?" Ian's not fond of Karen and he wishes Beto would do some talking. Beto at least is funny.

"Captain," she says, rolling her eyes. "Smiling all the time. It's weird."

"Uh, sorry, I guess."

Karen laughs and Ian's not sure he's seen her do that before. It makes her look younger, less bitter. "Not a bad thing. Just strange. You think you know somebody, think you've seen them happy, like you've seen them sad, like you've seen them pissed. But he's like this whole different person with you here. He's happier and brighter and just, _better_. Not drunk all the time."

Ian winces.

"Just..." Karen trails off, sighing. She looks at the darkening sky and if Ian didn't know better, he'd think those were tears in her eyes "Thank you, alright?"

"Uh," says Ian again. Each turn in this conversation has left him flustered and surprised, barely able to participate with actual words.

"He’s done everything for the people here," she continues, still looking at the sky. "Everything he fucking could. And that meant he sent a lot of people he loves away. Just glad one of them came back. So be good to him, alright? He's important."

That Ian can respond to. "I know he is. And I will."

And maybe part of being good to him is staying here, seeing this thing out, making sure that Mickey doesn’t have to say goodbye to the section he loves and the people still here.

Karen nods and then abruptly gets to her feet. "Tell Mandy I almost cried and lose a testicle."

She doesn't wait for Ian's response before she's stomping away.

* * *

 

Five minutes after Ian's typical bedtime, the bedroom door slides open and Mickey attempts to tip-toe in on clumsy feet.

Despite Mickey's obvious drunkenness, he's working very hard to stay silent as he pulls the door closed behind him with a soft click and tries to get undressed without turning on any lights. Ian can just make out Mickey's silhouette as he struggles to get his shirt off over his head.

"Need help?" Ian asks.

Mickey lets out a startled sound, jumping slightly and bumping into the dresser.

"Motherfucking _ow_ ," Mickey mutters, rubbing his hip when he finally gets off his shirt. "Did I wake you up?"

"Just got into bed," Ian replies. "Come here."

Mickey kicks off his boots and peels off his pants as he follows Ian's instructions. Tripping again on the bottom of the bed, Mickey ends up sprawled out on Ian's chest, his limb splayed messily. Ian grins as Mickey lets out a content sigh.

"Missed you," Mickey mumbles.

They have eleven years apart to make up for and now just a few hours apart is unbearable. "Missed you," Ian agrees. "How's Mandy? You her new best friend now?"

Mickey snorts. "She's sharp. Give her that. Gonna have to totally rethink Three."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Mickey says, kissing Ian for a moment before he sighs heavily and sits up. "The way we've done it before, get a high up guard in there, figure out the already sympathetic guards who are out here looking for people, and start bringing in our people to replace the fucks who only took the job beat up on prisoners. All that ain't gonna work in Three. It’ll take decades"

"Coulda told you that," Ian mutters. But he didn’t. Because he thinks revolution and is back in The Shed.

"Sure," says Mickey, running his hands through his hair. "Guess of the fifty or so guards, there's only two that she knows of that are looking for people. Some new young kid looking for his sister and having a love affair with a prisoner. And a medical worker."

"Carl," Ian supplies. Although he never talked much to the new guard, Bonnie chattered about him nonstop for a few months before Ian got transferred. She didn’t listen to a single of his warnings, that guards are not good, that guards cannot be trusted. “And Angela. Guess she’s technically a doc not a guard, but whatever. She’s helped me before. With medical checkups I gotta send to my doc sometimes. Bloodwork and shit.”

"Right," says Mickey, nodding like he knows this. "Mandy thinks it's gotta be the prisoners. They gotta be the ones to take the section."

Ian breathes deep, shakes off the phantom sting of a stungun, and thinks revolution.

“Have Vee talk to Iggy, a prisoner,” he replies. “He was the big time follower of M. Got transferred from somewhere with a few Good Guards and a lot of followers. One, I think. Had more faith then anyone else did.”

“Okay. Thanks. I’ll tell Vee in the morning.”

“And can you not drink like this?” Ian asks. “All those Drunk Mickey stories. Don’t like it.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? Just like that.”

“Sure. It’s not great. I know that.”

Eyes squeezed shut, he kisses Mickey’s temple, tries not to panic over revolutions, tries to fall asleep.

"This sounds violent, Mickey," Ian whispers as Mickey settles back down to lie on his chest.

"Yeah," Mickey replies. "I know."

* * *

 

Ian decides to kill himself on a Wednesday.

He’s spent weeks here at Three, dragging his knife across the throats of cows as they bleat and moan. Blood runs hot on his arms and he can’t remember what Lip looks like when he smiles.

He attempts to calculate just how many creatures he’s slaughtered – cow throats open under his knife, chicken necks broken between his hands – but fails when the numbers get too high.

To distract himself from this gruesome task, he thinks about Lip and the life he certainly has now. In his mind, Lip’s settled down, living alongside a pretty girl with a sharp tongue, and busy inventing a more efficient solar panel. The couple is expecting their second child, going through that clinic Ian found all those years ago.

Mickey is there. He’s happy, too, a grower like he always wanted. He’s a father like Lip is a father, with a house that he shares with his kid in the woods, but he’s doing it alone.

All Ian wants in this fucked world is for Mickey to be happy, but he’s never quite been able to imagine him with a new partner.

So in Ian’s head, Mickey lives with his kid in the woods, right across the street from Lip and Lip’s sharp-tonged woman and Lip’s kids. They all eat dinner together at least three times a week.

It’s his favorite pastime, imagining the lives Lip and Mickey have, but on this Wednesday Ian can’t remember what Lip looks like when he smiles. So Ian decides to kill himself.

He slaughters more cows and rules out any suicide method that involves knives. He could never have the courage to do to himself what he does to these animals.

Throughout dinner, as he sits alone at the end of a table with his shoulders hunched, his back to all the glares from his fellow prisoners and leers from the guards, he ponders the specifics of how and when he’ll do it. He stares down at his corn and decides how to die.

The roof is the only option. He’s been sneaking up there at night for the last couple weeks, slowly setting up an obstacle course to work out with when it became clear that there would be no getting through Three’s security for midnight jogging. The slaughterhouse is tall, at least eight stories, and Ian can swan dive right off this motherfucker. And that will be that.

It has to be soon, tonight, on this Wednesday that he forgot what Lip looks like when he smiles. It has to be now, before he gets too manic to focus on this one important task or too depressed to summon the energy for it.

A few more hours and it will be over. No more cows to kill, no more forgetting his family, no more desperately finding a guard to fuck as a means to keep himself out of trouble. This is something Ian can control, the only thing he can choose for himself in this cruel world he’s been forced into.

Ian chooses the end.

* * *

 

There is someone on his roof, crying.

Ian stutters to a stop, blinking at the girl sitting on the edge of the roof. For so many hours Ian’s been focused on this last task, that this hitch in his plan shocks him into stillness.

He must let out some sort of distressed sound because the girl whirls around, her dark, ratty hair flying out around her head. In the harsh glow from the floodlight, Ian can see wet cheeks and bight blue eyes.

She reminds him of Mickey.

“The fuck are you doing up here?” she says, scrambling to her feet and drying her tears. From head to toe she’s dressed in guard’s black but Ian forgets to drop his gaze. He’s been trained by countless encounters with countless other guards to stare at his feet, but there is something about this weeping girl that makes him forget. “Who the fuck are you?”

For the first time in a long time, he remembers that the guards are humans too, thinking, breathing, _crying_ , and they do more than get off on the power of their position.

This guard, her face all twisted in the same despair that Ian’s dealt with every moment since he first got taken, is a person like Ian is a person.

“Well?” she says, crossing her arms over her chest and sniffing.

“Ian,” replies Ian.

“This all your shit,” she says, to Ian’s makeshift work out tools.

Ian nods.

“The fuck are you doing up here?” she asks.

Ian stares at this girl, this young guard who can’t be any older than him, and he really thinks about what he was planning on doing up here. He tries to picture it, his calm walk off the edge of the roof, but faced with this guard and her very human moment, Ian can’t.

He can picture Mickey’s expressive eyebrows, the crinkle between them when he laughs. He can picture Lip rolling his eyes. And even if he still can’t remember what Lip looks like when he smiles, he can’t picture himself walking off this roof either.

Fuck, what did he almost _do_?

“Was thinking about jumping off.” Ian says it like a joke but the guard doesn’t laugh. She shakes her head and cries a little more, but she doesn’t laugh.

“That’s an awfully permanent thing,” she whispers. “Killing yourself.”

“So is being a prisoner,” Ian replies.

At that, she does laugh but there is no humor in it. “Really rather you didn’t,” she says. “Just the same.”

“Okay,” Ian agrees, shrugging. “I won’t.”

She narrows her eyes like she doesn’t believe him, but eventually nods like she’s choosing to trust him anyway.

“Mandy,” she says, pointing to her chest. “If you don’t tell anyone you caught me crying like a bitch, I won’t tell anyone what you got going on up here.”

Ian nods, his breath shuttering out of his chest. His hands are shaking and he’s suddenly so relieved that standing gets difficult. It’s terrifying, how determined he was to end it just a moment ago when he is so relieved to still be standing here now.

“Okay,” Ian agrees, moving towards the door.

“Do you want to sit with me?” Mandy asks. “Just for a minute?”

He’s not sure if she’s asking for his benefit or her own, but he sits. This girl is so sad and so small, and even if he has no desire to spend anymore time with a guard than he has to, this one knows he’s broken the rules. Best to sit. Best to do what she says.

So he sits with her on the roof and tries to forgive himself for forgetting what his brother’s face looks like when he smiles.

* * *

 

Somehow, it becomes a thing.

Somehow, they end up spending hours each night alone on the roof. Mandy works out with him and they talk about nothing; Chicago, swimming in the lake, their favorite places back home.

Somehow, Ian starts talking about Lip, talking about Mickey. He forgets she’s a guard and not just his friend, and he shares with her his most precious memories even when she doesn’t share her own.

Somehow, it becomes a thing. The only good thing Ian has going on here at Three.

* * *

 

“Today is my birthday,” Ian says, joining Mandy to sit on the edge of the slaughterhouse roof. It’s still too hot out, even with the sun down, but it’s cooler than the bunk room.

Ian’s mind is winding up, speeding towards mania, an all to familiar sensation. He can feel himself spinning faster and faster with every breath. For months and months, his head’s been placid and for a few moments he thought it wouldn’t happen again, but there are ripples now, more and more. Eventually, they’ll escalate into full blown rapids.

“Yeah?” says Mandy, lighting a joint. She gets the weed in some back alley guard trading with Eighteen. “This is the last of the bud for awhile. Supplier’s out. So you better enjoy it, birthday boy.”

Ian takes a hit, holding the smoke in his lungs as long as he can before it starts to burn. As he exhales, his brain whirls the smallest bit slower. He’s never managed to learn how to blow smoke rings like Mandy can.

“That’ll do,” Ian says, reclining back on his elbows and passing back the joint.

“How old are you anyway?”

He has to close his eyes and think about it, marking the time in summers. Two spent at Seventeen, two spent here. “Twenty-one. Pretty sure I’m twenty-one.”

“Damn. You’re like a little baby, you young thing you.”

“Yeah? How old’re you?” he ask as he accepts the joint.

“Twenty,” Mandy says. It might be the most personal thing she’s told in these years of friendship. Ian bites back all his questions. Mandy rolls her eyes. “Know I came out here young. Was better than the alternative, trust me. So are you going to tell me about your best birthday or what?”

“Didn’t I tell you this last year?” he asks, accepting the joint as she hands it back.

“Yes,” she says, scooting around on the cool cement until she can lie down parallel to the edge of the roof with her head in Ian’s lap. “It’s a good story.”

Ian grins and talks about the year that Mickey got it in his head to bake Ian a cake. One of the old growers had told him stories of long lost traditions, of cake on birthdays, and Mickey horded rations for months to make it happen for Ian. The attempt was a complete failure that ended with a nearly burned down house, Lip covered in flour, and Ian laughing so hard on the kitchen floor he couldn’t breathe.

He relives this story with great drama, making Mandy laugh and groan. He smokes more weed so he doesn’t have to think on the possibility that this memory isn’t true. Mickey and Lip feel lifetimes away, and Ian doesn’t trust his own brain to accurately catalog Real Memories separate from Stuff Ian Just Imagined. He doesn’t trust his brain to tell him if Mickey actually exists somewhere.

But Mandy loves this story so Ian will keep telling it on all his birthdays.

“Never had cake,” Mandy murmurs.

“Well, me neither! Mickey’s was gonna have carrots in it.”

Smiling, Mandy takes his hand. She really is radiant, with her head tilted back to look at the stars. Her eyes bright and glassy. He squeezes her hand, unable to even comprehend what life would be like without her.

Mandy rests her head on Ian’s shoulder. “Happy birthday,” she says again. “Really glad you were born. And if you have to be out here and I have to be out here, then at least we found each other. Never thought I’d have anybody again, when I signed up to guard.”

“It’s like having a family again,” he murmurs back. And it hurts, because there is no replacing Mickey, no replacing Lip, but Mandy is his family too, somehow. She is brave and kind and she doesn’t want anything from Ian except this. Sitting on the roof and getting a little solace from the misery that is Three.

It hits him at once that this really is his life now, Mandy and their nights on the roof his one source of joy. He’s going to spend the rest of his life with bloody hands. He’s going to spend the rest of his life aching for Mickey and missing Lip. He’s going to spend the rest of his life incomplete, broken, but he won’t be alone because he’s got Mandy, despite her guard black clothes.

Without the family he left behind, Ian will never be good again, but Mandy is a warm comfort at his side, and he thinks he might be able to pull off okay.

* * *

 

The whirl of the sewing machine is soothing and so is Shelia's gentle tone "Ease back on the pedal, dear. No need to rush. There, that's perfect. You're a natural, unlike that bumbling husband of yours."

Ian laughs, even as he stays focused on the soft fabric beneath his fingers. He doesn't mind her calling Mickey his husband, even if hardly anyone even back in Chicago bothers to get officially married these days.

At Three they called him prisoner. Here they call him husband and long lost love and Ian. It's a vast improvement.

Sewing is a vast improvement to butchering, too.

These days the routine is consistent, even if the work is not. He's spent time doing every job at Eighteen, from the kitchens to the stables. Last week he followed Mandy between endless rows of pot plants, each thriving under their own electric sun.

This week, it's sewing. Ian saved what he thought would be the most boring task for last, but instead of fumbling around and poking himself with needles like Mickey does, Ian picked up the repetitive motions quickly. Shelia moved him off button duty to a machine when she observed his fingers at work.

And Ian actually likes it, much to everyone’s shock.

"Hey," says Mickey, appearing at the small table that Ian shares with the sewing room’s small summer staff.

There is Paco, who always asks Mickey about Yev, Holly, whose main method of communication is flirtation, and Abraham, who uses the bright scraps of fabric left over from the clothes they ship to Chicago to make scarves. It’s good company and he’s had a good day.

"Hey," Ian says, tilting his head up for a kiss. Only Mickey, all sweaty and dirty and pink from a day spent outside, could break Ian's focus on the seam he is carefully stitching together.

Across the table, all the summer sewers wolf whistle and holler. Mickey flips them off without breaking the kiss and Ian smiles against his lip, closing his eyes.

"Good day?" Mickey asks, taking in Ian's easy grin.

"Sewing is great," Ian says. "I'm a natural."

"It's true!" Shelia calls out from behind rolls of fabric. She has big plans to move from sewing to cooking, but apparently it was decided that Karen, her replacement, should not yet be responsible for teaching anything to a sewing novice.

Mickey grins, playing with Ian's fingers. "Course you are. Always been good with your hands."

"Damn right," Ian replies, wiggling his fingers. "See these things? They're agile as hell."

"Dexterous, even," Mickey agrees.

"Supple."

"Long," says Mickey. “Miracles,” says Mickey.  And Ian actually blushes.

His fellow sewers tease them, keep catcalling. Shelia just beams and nods when Ian asks to cut out a few minutes early.

“This is a good place,” Ian declares as they walk towards Mickey’s room. Towards their room.

Mickey blushes. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. And I like sewing.”

“Who’d of fucking thought it?”

“The people are good, too,” Ian continues, slinging an arm over Mickey’s shoulders as they stroll. “Shelia and Paco. Beto’s hilarious. Still haven’t made up my mind on Karen.”

“She grows on you.”

“Certainly growing on Mandy.”

Mickey snorts and Ian’s happy; truly, genuinely.

“Wanna stay here.” He says it out loud for the first time, but he really decided weeks ago, months ago, when he remembered what it was like to have something worth protecting again. “Think you do too.”

Mickey brings them to a stop, a hand on Ian’s chest, backing him gently into a nearby wall. He studies Ian’s face intently, brow furrowed, lip bitten, and Ian grins. Looking at Mickey will forever make him grin.

“You sure?”

“What the fuck did I tell you about that goddamn question?” Ian mutters.

“That you don’t like it. That it’s almost as bad as ‘you okay?’ But I gotta know, if you’re sure. This is dangerous shit.”

“I know.”

“You don’t gotta save the world. You come first, Ian. You take care of yourself first. We take care of each other _first_.”

Sighing, he takes Mickey’s face between his palms, his thumbs tracing the soft skin beneath Mickey’s eyes. There used to be dark bags here, purple bruises from drinking too much and sleeping too little. But he doesn’t do that so much anymore. Ian takes his pills and they sleep eight hours and if Mickey has a drink, it’s only one or two with Mandy on the day of rest.

In just a few months, Ian’s life has a whole new path and he wants it to be here at Eighteen, at the home Mickey’s been building for over a decade.

“Don’t want to save the world,” Ian murmurs. “Just wanna build somewhere safe.”

“Dunno.” Mickey gnaws on his bottom lip, brows furrowed.

“Remember how I used to be? So fucking angry. You were so calm about everything, resigned to living how they told us to live, but I was so fucking angry. What do you think I woulda done back then? If I’d gotten even a whiff of revolution.”

Mickey snorts. “You woulda got yourself into some deep shit, dragged me along with you.”

Ian tries not to grimace. That’s how it really did end up going down. Ian got in deep shit, got himself taken, and Mickey followed.

“Glad it was you,” he continues as Mickey continues to frown at him. “You’re so fucking patient. Think its good, that you’ve waited until you have the numbers before you go all guns blazing. You’ve done so good, Mickey, and now we’re right here at the start of it and you just want to leave?”

“It’ll probably go down,” Mickey argues. “With or without us. We don’t need to be here for it to happen.   You come first, Ian. I fucking mean that.”

“Listen,” Ian says, letting his hands trail down Mickey’s smooth skin to rest on his neck. “I _want_ to be here. After fucking years of living under Pop Com power, I need to actually do something about it. And this is the best chance there’s gonna be. I’ll never forgive myself, if we leave now, and I don’t think you will either.”

Mickey sighs, searching Ian’s face. Ian's sure he will only see resolve there. Will only see steel.   He looks for too long and then leans forward, kissing Ian briefly, chastely.

“Okay,” he says, nodding. “Okay.” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading. I've reread each and every comment dozens of times, might have them memorized at this point. Seriously, thank you. I love and appreciate every one, and someday I am going to actually muster the courage to reply instead of just reading them and feeling like I'm about to explode with happiness.
> 
> [Rose](http://gardenofblueroses.tumblr.com/) is the greatest beta in all the land. Endless thanks to her.
> 
> Alright, here we go.

There are things he should not tell Mandy, but the words keep tumbling from his mouth in an uncontrollable wave. He talk, talk, _talks_ too much and Mandy doesn’t eye him warily like Bonnie the newbie did when he got going at dinner.

Mandy just nods along, listening.

Until he tells her something he really, really shouldn’t.

“Hold up, Kash?” she says, interrupting for the first time since Ian started rambling half an hour ago. “You’re fucking Kash? But he’s so—“

“Sweet? Helpful? Willing to let me camp out in his room for days when I just can’t slaughter any more cows? Keeps way worse guards off my back?” That was too much. This is too private. Mandy is his best and only friend in the world but she still wears black and he still told her too much, about how his mind works when its _really_ working and how he can’t work when its really _not_.

Mandy narrows her eyes. “Old, Ian. Was gonna say fucking old. Kash’s so fucking old.”

“He’s only, like, forty. Forty isn’t all that old. Before you know it, bam! Gonna wake up and look in the mirror and realize that we wasted more of our lives at Three than outta it and we’ll be forty too.”

“That’s depressing as hell.”

He wonders what Mickey will look like at forty, where his laugh-lines will grow deep. Ian won’t ever know. That’s the most depressing part.

“You fucking Kash because you want to fuck Kash?” Mandy murmurs, pulling her hand out of reach when Ian makes a grab for her joint. She’s completely missed his point on how aging is all relative and not a basis on which to judge prospective lovers, but Ian would rather have the joint. “Answer the question and you can have more weed,” she says.

“What question?”

She repeats the question and Ian speaks without thinking.

“Prisoners don’t get to _want_ things, silly,” he says, shaking his head. “Wanting and never getting is not good for the soul, Mandy, so I’ve stopped doing it. Stopped wanting things. Only want things I already have now, like you as my friend.”

And even that’s dangerous, because he could lose it so easily.

“And you want Kash?”

Ian shrugs. “Sure. He’s fine. It’s something to pass the time. I like sex, but what I really like is to not get thrown in The Shed or stunned or beat down when I just can’t fucking do things like everyone else can do things. Trust me, Mandy, done this before. Things work out as long as you don’t forget that the guards are just using you like you’re using them. Forget that, and things get sticky.   Do you think Mickey’s real?”

Mandy blinks at him and does not protest when he plucks the joint from between her slender fingers. “Wait. What?”

“ _Real_ , real. Like a living, breathing, _real_ person who is out there somewhere in Chicago, growing tomatoes and raising some kids and hanging out with my brother? Working on his laugh-lines? Because sometimes, when I talk about him, doesn’t he sound too good to be true?”

Mandy snorts. “Not really.”

“What?” Ian asks, shocked.

“Sure, it sounds like he really loved you,” Mandy says. “But he’s not like some flawless individual that could only ever exist in stories. He sounds like a grump with bad hygiene.”

Ian throws his head back and laughs with his whole body. It sounds crazy. Even to him, his laugh sounds absolutely bat shit crazy. And there is nothing he can do about it. Just try to not completely unravel.

“He outgrew the bad hygiene. And he always takes great care in cleaning vegetables.”

“See?” Mandy says, rubbing Ian’s arm. “That’s not the kind of detail you’d just make up, Ian. Think he’s real.”

Ian chews at the skin around his fingernail and nods, wishing he could be as sure as Mandy is about anything. He can’t trust his brain to remember Mickey right. He can’t trust his eyes to understand the shadow on the periphery of his vision, that always seems to be telling him to do something but Ian can’t figure out what.

* * *

 

It tells him to kill the cow.

The thing at the edge of his sight brings him away from the cows he normally kills, out of the slaughterhouse and past the corrals, to where the calves are grazing in the pasture.

The whispers turn to screams when he sees the little black one with red eyes. _Demon, demon, demon,_ it screams at him. _Kill it, kill it, kill it._ _Now, before it grows big and poisons the others. Now, you’ll do it eventually anyway. Just the time is different. Do it now.  You’ve killed all the others._

The knife is a familiar weight in his hands and this baby cow might bleat like the others, but Ian can’t hear it, can’t hear anything but his own breathing and not his own voice.

He is wet and hot with the blood on his hands and the tears on his cheeks.

He keeps crying, long after they pry the knife from his fingers and drag him away.

* * *

 

“Call me Ned,” says the Captain of Three after Ian fucks him. Ian puts on the smile all these guards love, the one that makes him look young and innocent and ready to be corrupted. Ian smiles and fucks him again and somehow stays out of trouble, even with the calf’s blood still dark under his fingernails.

Call Me Ned falls asleep, but Ian doesn’t. Instead he paces around the captain’s cabin, trying to get his hands clean.

* * *

 

Before Ian convinced Mickey to stay here and see this thing out, he thought Mickey was obsessed with his revolution, constantly in contact with his Good Guards, spread throughout The Farmland.

Now that the decision’s been made, Mickey's worse. And it’s not just him. It’s the whole damn section.

Revolution is the only conversation topic at meals. The orchard prisoners and guards discuss the current big question, _What to do About Three?_ Even with motley skeleton staff of summer sewers its all talk about Mickey and what he's planning next.

Ian's grateful that now when he thinks, talks, _breathes_ revolution, he's not back on the floor of The Shed. If breaking the rules still left him so terrified, he'd never get a chance to breathe around here, with no one capable of talking about anything else.

It's Karen that explains it to him, on the way to dinner.

"Exciting times." She talks quiet, talks like she’s more sad than excited.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Things are finally happening. For years we've heard about it, guards moving around in the sections, spreading the word. Captain's been firing Pop Com guards since he got the authority and there's been change, but this is the first time something big’s actually gonna happen outside Eighteen. Something big with Three."

"They're excited, huh?" Ian says as they pass a group of prisoners, huddled together and gesturing wildly as they speak. "What about you?"

"Mostly, I'm just so fucking ready," Karen says. "But completely exhausted at the same time."

"Yeah," Ian agrees. He’s a little tired just thinking about it. "Yeah."

Mickey and Mandy are already in the dining hall, seated across from each other. They each wear similar scowls, deliberately not making eye contact and radiating grumpiness.

At the sight of them, Ian grins, revolution induced exhaustion forgotten.

He doesn’t even say anything as he slides into the bench next to Mickey, grinning when he sees there is already a food tray there waiting for him. He kisses Mickey’s neck, right behind his ear, and then lets his teeth graze when he finds that one ticklish spot. Mickey shrieks a little but when he attempts to squirm away he doesn’t get far before Ian wraps an arm around his waist to pull him back.

“Fucking quit it.”

Ian nods and nuzzles closer, until Mickey tilts his head down and Ian can finally reach his lips. The kiss is probably too much, given where they are, but if Mickey doesn’t have a problem making out a little in the dinning hall at dinnertime, than neither does Ian.

“Good day?” Mickey asks. His breath is hot on Ian’s lip before he kisses him again.

Ian hums. “Better now.”

And it goes on like that, whispering about their day spent apart between kisses, the whole world boiling down to this bench seat and Mickey’s forehead pressed against his, even with the dinning hall loud and bustling around them.

They manage to drown everything else out, until Beto sits down, the talk of revolution picks up, and Mickey breaks away, turning his head from Ian’s lips.

“What?” Mickey says. “What was that about Three?”

Beto nods across the table at Karen, who sighs, runs her hands through her hair, and scoots a little closer to Mandy. “Tell him,” says Beto.

Mickey’s whole body turns away from Ian and the hand that he rests on Ian’s knee does not make up for losing Mickey’s undivided attention.

“Karen?” Mickey says.

“Got an idea,” she murmurs, glancing at Mandy. “It’s gonna be the prisoners, right? Who take back Three once Vee gets shit organized?”

“Yeah,” says Mickey.

“It’s all gotta happen at once, Cap. Pop Com guards need to be taken out of all the other sections right when the prisoners take Three. Same night. All at once.”

Mickey thumbs his lip, tilts his head to the side, considering. “Huh.”

“So our people, guards and prisoners alike, capture all the Pop Com guards in one go. It could work, right? There ain’t that many left, really, and that way when Chicago finds out what we did at Three, there is no one for them to go to on the inside.”

When Karen finishes, everyone turns to look at Mickey. He’s quite and still, staring off into the distance as he is apt to do when he’s thinking so hard. Ian pats Mickey’s hand while he waits.

Karen’s less patient.

“What’ll it be, M?” Karen snaps after the seconds stretch towards minutes.

Ian blinks at her, confused by the nickname but it certainly gets Mickey’s attention.

“Don’t fucking call me that,” he mutters.

“Sorry, M,” says Karen.

“Won’t happen again, _M_ ,” Beto chimes in, snickering at Karen like they’ve messed with Mickey this way before.

Ian’s on the verge of understanding something, and it makes his stomach bubble with nerves. He shares a look with Mandy, her eyes wide.

“So fucking sorry, M,” Karen continues. “Oh glorious, M. Leader of the revolution, man of the people. Will you ever forgive us, _M_?”

“Alright, alright,” Mickey says, still scowling. “Enough. Can we talk about your damn good idea now or you want to keep fucking around and pissing me off?”

“What ever you say, M,” Karen says.

“Sure thing, M,” Beto says.

And Ian gets it. This thing that’s been staring him in the face from the beginning. The joke is not calling Mickey the nickname of the mythic revolutionary they whisper about in the sections. It’s calling him by his own name, one he hates.

* * *

 

"You're M," says Ian, sliding the door shut behind them with a bang when they finally get to their room after dinner. The accusation has been sitting on his tongue, making it hard to swallow or talk or even breathe.

How fucking stupid is Ian? How fucking blind? Of course Mickey is M.

"Come on, man," Mickey says, peeling off his black shirt like this is every other night, like Ian isn't overflowing with long overdue rage.

It’s a nearly foreign emotion, one he was familiar with Before, but somehow lost over his years as a prisoner. He was defeated. He gave up. On some level he thought he deserved it, the way he fucked everything up, and maybe he stopped believing that after about a hundred letters with Doc B and Mandy saying it in his ear, but the rage never burned through him like it does now.

Is this anger too angry? Now that he’s not a prisoner anymore, is he allowed to be this angry, that Mickey didn’t really tell him the whole truth? Is this a bipolar thing? A Normal Person thing?

There’s so much he lost, so much stolen from him and countless others, and instead of quiet acceptance, in this moment Ian wants to hurt everyone who ever had a hand in hurting him. It rushed back, all at once, when he realized that the mythic _M_ was no prisoner, no slave, but a motherfucking guard.

Ian asked about M, point fucking blank, and Mickey scoffed, claiming M wasn’t real, just some made up person representing everyone resisting. But that’s not really true, and when prisoners say _M_ they are talking about _Mickey_. It’s so fucking obvious now, and Ian is so fucking stupid.

Of course Mickey couldn’t handle actually being M. Of course Mickey would lie to himself about it, and Ian, too.

And he can’t make the pieces fit. M’s always been a guard and guards are bad. But this guard was Mickey and Mickey is good. But no matter how good Mickey is, he’s still a guard, he could never get it like the prisoners do, and so him being M is somehow bad.

It’s all tangled up, so Ian gets mad because whether or not this is a Normal Person level of angry, he can’t help it.

"Can't believe you didn't fucking tell me! You wanted me to choose, revolution or peace out east, and _this_ you keep to yourself?"

"Didn't fucking keep it to myself!" Mickey yells back, hands curled into fists. There is a sick sort of pleasure in dragging Mickey into anger, too. "Told you I drunkenly ran my mouth, and the right people heard me."

“You said M wasn’t real! Said it was people just giving the movement a name!”

“M ain’t real!”

"But it comes from you, Mickey. You're _M_!" It feels like his first night at Eighteen, when Ian was so overjoyed to see Mickey and so sickened by his guard-black clothes. Ian yelled at Mickey then, too, accusing Mickey of being something unfamiliar, something _bad_. This is worse, although Ian can’t really understand why, can’t be bothered to figure it out when he’s so full of rage.

"Fine, maybe it was my big mouth that got an organized effort going, but I'm not M. No one is fucking _M._ It's not a real thing. Its like the accumulation of all the shit people have been thinking about Pop Com and just not saying for years. And if anyone is actually M it should be fucking Sully or Fiona or Vee, repeating the stupid shit I said."

Ian wasn't even aware that he was pacing until he comes to an abrupt stop, as far away from Mickey as possible in the small room. One of those names is not like the others. One of those names is not part of a million Mickey stories. "Who the fuck is Sully?"

Mickey winces, rubbing at the back of his neck, and suddenly Ian absolutely does not want to know.

"A guard. You know, Sully. Outta Four, now. Pings me all the time."

"Right," says Ian, remembering the initials SF calling Mickey _hot stuff_. "Course it’s a fucking guard. It's all about the fucking guards. Course M isn’t really a myth or even some prisoner, someone who actually knows what its like to have zero fucking power and no control over their own life. Course M is some weird mixture of you and the dude you're fucking."

Mickey winces again, his cheeks turning red. "Ain't fucking him." He takes a deep breath and looks at his feet. "Haven't in years and years."

Ian barks out a laugh, shaking his head. "Your whole fucking revolution’s bullshit, with the guards still calling the shots and us lowly prisoners just have to blindly trust you to take care of it."

"That ain't fair," Mickey says, his voice too small. And Ian knows that too, knows at dinner tonight it was prisoners and guards alike that discussed The Next Big Question. It was prisoner Karen with the best idea but that doesn’t mean it works that way in any section outside Eighteen.

"Nothing's fair!" Ian shrieks. "It's not fucking fair that I got ripped outta my life, that I had to learn to survive out here, survive my disorder without my fucking family. It's not fucking fair that Bonnie got picked up for stealing food and diapers for her siblings after their mom split when she was only eighteen or that Iggy got taken before he could even organize a protest in Chicago and no one ever heard about it. It's not fair that Kevin still doesn't know what the fuck he did and that he only has two whole fucking fingers on his right hand because he wasn't lucky enough to end up in your precious as fuck Eighteen."

It’s precious to Ian, too, but the words keep coming.

"Ian—“ Mickey’s quiet now, all the fight gone out of him as he tries to sooth Ian's fury. Ian doesn't want to be soothed. This anger is long overdue.

"And sure, its different here," Ian continues. "But you’re still a fucking guard and I'm still a fucking prisoner. Maybe you'd never throw me in The Shed or beat on me or make me give you a blowjob in exchange for a safe place to wait out an episode, but you could. That ain’t fucking fair, either."

"Ian," Mickey pleads. He’s appalled, wide-eyed and pale. And Ian can't stand it.

"What're you gonna do with all those Pop Com guards you capture, huh?" Ian asks. The abrupt subject change has Mickey gaping. "If you go with Karen’s plan and capture all Pop Com guards at once and suddenly the only guards out here are your goddamn revolutionaries, what comes next? Where do the bad ones go?"

Mickey opens his mouth but Ian can't stop yelling.

"You gonna let them go?" he asks. "You gonna let them be safe? Even when they deserve to be torn apart to make up for all the pain they caused, and it still wouldn't be enough."

Ian's chest is heaving, all breathing techniques and tools to calm himself down forgotten when faced with his newfound rage. He feels huge and out of control, like if he was still at Three he'd easily take his knife and slice open the nearest guard instead of a flank of beef. He feels dangerous.

But then he gets a good look at Mickey's horrified expression, the one Ian put there with talk of blowjobs and ripping people apart, and Ian can’t hold onto it. The anger drains away quicker then it came on, leaving him totally exhausted and completely guilty.

How could he say all that to Mickey? How could he possibly blame Mickey for doing the best he could? For being so fucking good? For saving Ian and maybe the whole of The Farmland, too? Is he manic? Did it sneak back up on him while he was too busy marveling over Mickey and pretending the last eleven years didn’t happen? Is that a Normal Peron thing? To be so furious one moment and so not furious the next?

"Ian—“

Mickey tires again but Ian can't bear to hear him speak. A moment ago he was huge and powerful with anger, but now he is small and crumbling with guilt.

"Need a walk," he murmurs, before fleeing.

* * *

 

Somehow Mandy is always around when Ian needs her and after a punishing run through the orchard during which Ian regrets every word that came out of his mouth, he finds her sitting on the roof.

Again, Eighteen is not like Three, because the roof there was a secret space, the one spot Ian almost felt safe, and here there are benches and flowerpots, where anyone can spend a nice evening looking out over the orchard and on to the woods.

Here at Eighteen there are benches, but Mandy is sitting on the edge of the roof anyway.

"Hey," he says, joining her.

“So Mickey’s M,” she says back. She sat through dinner, heard what Beto and Karen called Mickey. Only Mandy noticed Ian’s silence and she probably guessed the cause.

“Yeah.”

“Did you know?”

Ian shakes his head. “Said M wasn’t real.”

“Makes sense now, though.”

“Yeah. Fuck, I don’t know why it’s so weird. Knew Mickey helped start it. Maybe it shouldn’t matter that M isn’t from the prisoners, by the prisoners, for the prisoners but I just got so fucking mad at Mickey about it anyway.”

Mandy sighs, rubs his shoulder.

"You look like shit," Mandy says, studying him,

Ian swallows, resists the urge to pace around on the roof, and asks the question he’s been asking himself since he left Mickey.

“Am I manic?”

Mandy tilts her head to the side, looks a little like Mickey as she thinks about it. She’s looking him right in the eye and Ian wonders if she sees wide eyes.

“Don’t think so,” she finally decides.

“But you didn’t hear what I said to Mickey. Shit I didn’t even mean! Got so fucking angry for no real reason. I mean, yeah, he was a little misleading with the M stuff but its not like he lied to me. Think he believes that himself. But I got so fucking angry anyway.”

Mandy scoffs. “People say shit they don’t mean when they’re mad all the time.”

“But—“

“And maybe you were just overdo for some angry. Haven’t really seen you angry, even with that med shit, and you, my friend, have a lot to be angry about.”

“But—“

“We’ll keep an eye out, but I’m telling you. You look like shit but you don’t seem manic.”

Ian feels the tiniest bit better. "Yeah, well you look pretty miserable yourself," Ian replies, studying Mandy's profile as she brings a joint to her lips. "What happened?"

Mandy sighs, burying her face into her hands. "Think I like Karen," she replies, her words muffled in her palms.

"Hell yeah," Ian says, bumping her shoulder with his. "Good for you."

She uncovers her face to better scowl at him.

"Not good for you?" Ian asks.

"I _hate_ Karen."

Ian laughs, pleased that Mandy's weird drama is distracting him from his own. "No, you don't."

"All we do it fight. Well, and the other thing, but mostly all we do is fight. That’s all fine but liking her isn’t."

"Liking her’s fine, too," Ian says as Mandy goes back to smoking. "Seriously, Mands. It's good. You can have happy shit, you know? No ones gonna take it from you out here, at least if Mickey has his way. Try to just enjoy it, maybe."

Mandy slowly turns her head, raising an eyebrow at him. "That's some decent advice. You been following it?"

Ian sighs and collapses back on the roof to stare at the starry sky.

"What happened?" asks Mandy.

So Ian tells her. He's better at this now, actually sharing even if the only people who ever get all his secrets and thoughts are Mandy and Doc B. He's really gotta just tell Mickey stuff, too, instead of screaming it at him in the worst delivery imaginable. With Mandy at least he manages to sound like a reasonable, functioning human being.

"Wow," Mandy says when Ian's finished. His chest is heaving again, but this time he remembers his breathing and manages to calm down. "You really don't like that he's a guard."

Ian grunts.

"You resent me, too? For the whole guard thing?" she whispers.

"What?" asks Ian, sitting up again to better look at her. "No. You had a good reason for signing up for this shit."

"And Mickey didn't?"

Doing his best to ignore the sad smile she gives him, Ian stares at his hands in his lap. He presses his fingers into the scar crossing his palm, an old habit to ground him, to keep him in this body. It's far from his only scar, but it’s the one that started it all.

He thought he was doing better. He thought he finally stopped hating himself for what he did to get this scar and for all the others. He thought he believed Mandy and Doc B when they say its not his fault, that he doesn’t deserve any of it. The guilt will never leave him, but he really thought he was doing better with the constant shame and self-loathing.

But Mandy saw it when Ian couldn't, as she always has. Deep down he thinks that Mandy had a good reason to become a guard, but Mickey didn't. Ian wasn’t a good reason.

He holds Mandy's hand for a long time before he summons the courage to face Mickey again.

* * *

 

Mickey's not asleep when Ian sneaks back into his room, but he is in bed. Shirtless, Mickey’s fucking around on the tablet in his lap, using only his left hand. When Ian slides the door shut behind him with a little click, Mickey glances up.

"Sorry," Ian says before Mickey can speak. "So fucking sorry. Didn’t mean it. Don’t know why I said it."

"It’s fine," Mickey says, waving Ian off and swaying slightly.

"It's not fine." Ian crosses the room, crawling into Mickey's bed even though he's not entirely sure that he's welcome here after all the vile shit that came spilling out of his mouth only a few hours ago. "So, so sorry. Mick—“

"You think I'm not furious?" Mickey interrupts, still slurring and this close Ian can smell the booze. In his lap, Mickey’s hands curl into fists, knuckles white, several on his right hand bloodied.

“Mickey, what the fuck?” Ian says, pulling Mickey’s hand into his lap. There is a dent in the dry wall across the room, cracked and crumbling.

"You think I don't want to fucking murder every motherfucker who ever hurt you?” Mickey continues, completely ignoring Ian’s concern and his own injury. “Wanna track them down, take away everything they ever loved, and put bullets right between their eyes."

Ian takes a shuddering breath. "Shit, Mickey."

“Some days, days like today, think that we should,” he whispers, sharp and deadly and in this moment Ian sees just how dangerous Mickey could be. “Just kill them all. Do it like Karen says, all at once, but instead of capturing them we should kill them. Should just kill them all.”

Ian shakes his head, heart speeding up, breath coming in harsh. “No. No, Mickey. We shouldn’t.”

Mickey sighs, reaches out to run his fingers through Ian’s hair with his uninjured hand. He is gentle again, no longer vicious and terrifying.

"Yeah, most days I know that. Can’t be about vengeance.” Mickey stares at nothing across the room, at something Ian can’t see, and all those stories of Mickey drunkenly rambling seem a lot more real now. "Gotta be about building something better. You remember reading about history? Back at school?"

Mostly Ian remembers being bored as hell during that particular subject and he shakes his head, more concerned with Mickey still not looking at him, the alcohol on his breath, the blood on his knuckles.

"People were killing each other all over the place," Mickey says. It seems to take a lot of effort, but he straitens his fingers, palms flat against the sheet covering his lap. "Can’t go back there, can’t be like that again. Would be so easy. To make it about vengeance until we escalate and they escalate and it keeps going until we're all dead. Maybe it's inevitable, but no way its gonna be us that pushes to that point. If its gonna get bloody, it'll be because they took it there. Not us."

“Okay, Mick,” whispers Ian, running his fingers up and down Mickey’s forearm. “You’re right. That’s good.”

“Sorry I got drunk,” he replies, miserable like Ian’s miserable. “Won’t do it again.”

“Sorry I wouldn’t tell you much about the last eleven years and yelled bits of it at you in a fit of rage. Won’t do it again.”

Mickey snorts, letting his head fall onto Ian’s shoulder. Ian breathes deep and closes his eyes.

“Sorry,” Mickey whispers, shaking his head, lolling around on Ian’s shoulder. “So sorry. So sorry. For not explaining right about M. For taking so long. For everything you went through, everything they did to you. So fucking sorry.”

“I’ve told you and told you,” Ian replies. “You got nothing to be sorry for. Hate when you say sorry like this.” And he does. Mickey’s constant stream of sorrys is worse than when he asks if Ian’s okay too many times, worse than when he asks if Ian is sure. Worse, because Mickey is somehow blaming himself for all this.

And he really doesn’t blame Mickey for a thing, despite the things he screamed just a few hours ago.  Sometimes he just sees Mickey in all that black and has a hard time separating him from the people he does blame.

"Ain't never gonna know what it's like, to be a prisoner," Mickey continues against his shoulder. "Ain't never gonna be that level of powerless, but I didn't have the power to find you, Ian, not for eleven fucking years."

“Was it worth it?” And even with everything he yelled at Mickey tonight, this is the crux of it. He doesn’t feel worth all the years Mickey put in and the effort it took to find this old, battered version of Ian. “Looking for so long? Waiting so long?”

Mickey laughs. “Course it was. You’re worth everything. Decades. Centuries. Millennia.”

Somehow, Ian smiles. Very nearly laughs, too.

Mickey’s tablet pings, vibrates, interrupts the moment, and has Mickey lifting his head from Ian’s shoulder. As Mickey grumbles, Ian peeks at the conversation open in Lip’s messenger.

And maybe for one little second he gets mad all over again when he sees that while Ian was hating himself in the orchard, Mickey was pinging Sully, but then he actually reads the messages. It’s all business. All revolution. All Mickey sharing Karen’s idea that they capture all Pop Com guards across all the sections all at once. And then Sully’s reply.

SF: brilliant

SF: that Karen is _brilliant_

SF: ain’t no way we gonna be able to figure this shit out over chat

SF: time for a sneaky family reunion

SF: you’re hosting

“He’s coming here?” Ian whispers as Mickey drunk fingers type gibberish. Type and erase. Type and erase.

“Guess so. Is that, like, okay?”

“Yeah,” he replies, meaning it now, hoping he means it tomorrow. “This is how we do it, right? M’s glorious revolution is getting serious, now.”

Mickey scowls at him and then taps the backspace over and over even though there is nothing left to erase, brow furrowed in thought. Inspiration strikes and he presses a kiss to Ian’s cheek before furiously typing with minimal errors, even though he’s still working one handed.

MM: goodplan

MM: make sure you bring a rep for the prisoners

MM: gotta hear their voice too

* * *

 

“Can I tell you?” Ian says. The tablet’s put away, the lights off, and he should be sleeping, but he can’t quite get there yet. At the sound of Ian’s voice Mickey opens his eyes, stirring a little as he gets more comfortable with his head on Ian’s chest. They should be sleeping, but Ian must say this right now, while he still has the courage. “Gonna tell you everything. In the morning? First thing after breakfast. Everything that happened? All of it?”

“Yeah.” Mickey takes a deep breath, nods.   “Okay, yeah.”

“And you can’t drink it away,” he lectures, already plotting to purge all alcohol from their room. “And you can’t blame yourself.”

Mickey nods, eyes fluttering closed.

“And no interrupting, either.”

Mickey huffs. “Fucking fine.”

“And, uh. Could you maybe, let me hold your hand?”

Chuckling, Mickey blindly roots around in the sheets until he finds Ian’s hand, lacing their fingers together.

* * *

 

Seated at the desk in Mickey's office, Ian shifts around in the chair. It’s impossible to get comfortable. The chair’s too high to accommodate Mickey's shortness and Ian's knees hit the desk. The back’s too hard, the wheels stick when he tries to swivel around.

He scowls down at the blank piece of paper in front of him and the pen in his hand, and then moves on to stare at Mickey where he's working on the couch on the other side of the room.

For the fifth time since sitting down fifteen minutes ago, Ian sighs. Mickey's still looking down at his tablet, so Ian tries again, sighing louder.

Mickey chuckles, shaking his head. "You okay over there, tough guy?"

"Don't laugh at me. This is hard."

"Thought you wrote to her all the time," Mickey says, setting aside the tablet and giving Ian his full attention.

"I do," Ian says, spinning a little in the chair. "Or I did. Haven't since I got here. Just, it's fucking work, you know? I write to Doc B and I gotta be all mindful and shit. Gotta tell her about my routine, how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking. Bipolar, bipolar, bi-fucking-polar. Didn't want to think about it. Just wanted to live in our happy little bubble. But I fucked that up pretty good last night."

Mickey winces, looks at his lap, and Ian can tell that he's still raw and shaken from their fight and Ian's Great Confession this morning.

Mickey's a fucking captain. He knows how it works in other sections, has seen Ian's scars, but this morning Ian confirmed all of Mickey's worst fears. The last couple years might've been okay, but Ian went through hell to get there and now Mickey knows every lured detail.

At some point, Ian made the mistake of looking up from the floor to Mickey's face as he spoke about his transfer to Three, and the combination of utter rage and complete heartbreak that Ian saw in his expression was enough to make him want to stop, to make him stitch his lips shut and go back to pretending it never happened.

But Mickey just let him talk. He gripped Ian's hand tight and listened intently. When Ian was finally done, Mickey wrapped him up in a hug. _I love you, I love you, I love you_ , he said. _You're safe now and we're gonna keep it that way._

Part of staying safe is not just sneaking around behind Pop Com's back or Mickey's revolution succeeding, it's also Ian doing everything he can to stay healthy, eating right and sleeping long and exercising often. It's telling Mickey when Ian can't stand to see him in black and paying attention to what's going on in his head. It's writing Doc B about it.

It's hard fucking work and since he got to Eighteen, he's only been doing a half ass job.

Instead of talking to Mickey, explaining why seeing Mickey in all that black sometimes makes his skin crawl and why he walks around so guilty, so ashamed, so much of the time, Ian went on pretending that nothing was wrong and then it all came out in one angry, crushing wave last night.

"You didn't fuck anything up," Mickey murmurs. "We both got work to do, on the communicating thing. Shoulda made it clear that people think I'm M."

"You _are_ M," Ian says, just to see Mickey scowl.

"There’s no fucking M!" Mickey hands flail around and Ian laughs. "Alright, alright. Don't fucking laugh at me," Mickey says, mimicking Ian’s earlier whining.

Ian's chuckles die down and he goes back to staring at the blank page on the desk. "Just wanted a break, you know? Just wanted to not have to worry about my fucking illness for a few months and just be happy with you."

"Yeah," Mickey says, nodding. "But it don't have to be one or the other. We can be happy together and deal with the bipolar. You'll tell me your shit. I'll tell you my shit. We'll figure it out."

Ian grins. "Damn, Mick. When did you get so wise?"

Mickey rolls his eyes. "Write your fucking letter."

“I’m gonna send her that shitty scarf I knitted with Shelia last week. An apology for not writing for so long.”

“I’m sure she’ll love that,” Mickey says, sounding like he actually means it.

* * *

 

“What’s wrong with you?” Mandy asks the moment Ian takes his seat next to her on the edge of the roof.  

It’s Mandy. Of course it’s Mandy. For one moment when he pushed through the door to the slaughterhouse roof, he thought it was Mickey sitting there, with his dark hair. Shoulders rounded, curved in on himself as if he can protect his chest that way.

Mostly, he just wants it to be Mickey. Always wants it to be Mickey. Knows its never gonna be Mickey.

Of course it’s Mandy. He came up here to see her.

He’s been avoiding her and their roof for weeks now, since the calf. Ned’s kept him occupied. He couldn’t bear to see Mandy after what he did in that pasture. He couldn’t bear to hear Mandy ask that question – what’s _wrong_ with _you_? – but when he imagined it in his head she was mean and shocked and judgmental.

Instead Mandy asks – _what’s_ wrong _with_ you? – like she’s seen a variation on his kind of wrong before, like she has some experience with what that doctor all those years ago called mental illness.

“Bipolar,” he confesses with a sob.   It’s not a word he’s used or even thought of in years. He’s had no choice but to accept the mania and the depression like he accepts the seasons, but the word bipolar is of no use to him as long as he’s out here without access to all those meds that doctor talked about.

Mandy takes his hand and Ian is amazed that she is willing to touch him after she’s heard the stories of Ian kneeling in manure, covered in blood, muttering apologies to the dead calf before him. Dragged to the captain. Locked away with him in his cabin for weeks.

“Never got around to telling you about my mom, did I?” Mandy whispers, squeezing his hand and looking out at the dark section below them.

“No,” Ian whispers back.

“Loved her a lot,” Mandy says. “Had a couple fuckhead brothers, but I was her favorite. She was my best friend. Sometimes you remind me of her, like when you get sad? That happened to her, too. She’d stay in bed for days, too exhausted to do anything. She’d mutter over and over how sorry she was. Like she wanted to get out of bed for me but she just couldn’t and it was killing her. Things got bad. Until she had me get in touch with this doc, Bianca, out in DC. And she got better for awhile. Until she wasn’t.”

“What happened?” Ian asks, suddenly terrified.

Mandy smiles ruefully, turns to look over the dark section quite below their feet. “Don’t think I’m ever gonna really, totally, for fucking certain, know the answer to that question. Wasn’t there when it happened. Mom had this shitbird boyfriend who she loved more than seemed reasonable. He said she did it to herself, threw herself down the stairs, but the more time goes by the less I believe him. Now, I think it was him, but I can’t tell if I just want it to have been him or her death really is suspicious. Not that it matters so much now—“

“It matters. Mandy—“

“Watch that fucking look on your face,” Mandy hisses like she’s furious but she doesn’t let go of his hand. “Don’t need anyone’s pity.”

Swallowing past his dry throat, Ian nods for her to continue.

“Anyway, she died,” Mandy says, sniffing back tears. “My fuckhead brothers and her shitbird boyfriend got together, plotted to fucking _sell_ me to some neighborhood family with a son whose quotas were getting called in. Sold me like I was a fucking cow. So I left, came out here where no would tell me to have a fucking kid I don’t want with a person I don’t like.”

“Damn,” says Ian, impressed. He always knew Mandy was brave just by the way she’s been willing to be his friend, but this is more courage than he could’ve guessed.

“The point of telling you that,” Mandy says, “was proving that I trust you. That’s why I told you. Because I trust you and you’re my family and I wanted you to know.”

“Okay?” Ian says, frowning.

“Do you trust me back?”

Ian nods.

“Good,” she says. “We need to get you on some fucking pills.”

Ian chuckles miserably. “Tell me something I haven’t known for the last five years.”

“So if I get them, you’ll take them?”

Ian doesn’t even hesitate, not after all the time he’s spent dreaming of a cure, an off switch in the form of a little pill.

“Yeah.”

“You’ll finally let me help you? Instead of going to these piece of shit, predatory guards?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Okay.”

And she keeps holding his hand.

* * *

 

"Hey, I know you."

The giant man before him looks like a nightmare. His greasy brown hair is tied back into a messy bun and he's got blood smeared across his pale white cheekbone. The apron he wears might’ve been white once, but it too is now a horror show of blood and gore.

The knife in his hand and the wide grin on his face remind Ian of those scary serial killer stories Mickey used to tell him, insisting that they were true and that back in the day there were people that actually murdered not one person but many. Ian would laugh, dismiss Mickey's rambling as ghost story nonsense, and kiss Mickey until he was less horrified.

"You're that loner who went nuts and stabbed that calf like a billion times. Kev," he says, extending a hand. The fingers on his right hand have been partially sliced off, the pinky missing above the first knuckle, the next finger a little taller, and the middle finger missing just the very top section. It's a straight diagonal line, like one wrong cut shortened all three fingers. Only the pointer and the thumb remain unscathed. But the injury looks old, the nubs completely healed.

Ian flinches, but shakes Kev's hand. He has a surprisingly strong grip for someone with incomplete fingers.

"Ian," he replies, still wary.

"Hey, Ian. Don't worry about the whole wacko slaughtering thing. Who hasn't wanted to go on a stabbing rampage, living in this hellhole?" He stabs the point of his knife into a nearby hunk of meat as if to accentuate his point and Ian jumps a little. "You're kinda my hero."

"Uh," says Ian.

"But they assigned you here, to the butcher shop?" Kev asks. "What were you doing before?"

"Slaughterer," Ian murmurs, pressing his finger into the scar running across the palm of his hand.

Kev snorts. "You telling me that now that you stabbed a cow to death, they don't trust you to keep on slaughtering them? Classic."

Ian shrugs, a real smile tugging at his lips for the first time in weeks.

"Alright, alright," says Mandy, finally coming into the room. "That's enough prisoner. Let's get to work."

Kev gives her a sarcastic solute. He grabs his knife again.

Ian always thought that Mandy was only so nice to him, but it's obvious that Kev is comfortable with her here. It makes him like Mandy that much more.

He's not really sure how Mandy managed to get him this gig, with this jovial giant butcher and under her watchful eye, but with Mandy at his back, Kev smiling like that, meds on their way from DC, and Ian fucking Captain Ned for that extra bit of protection, he thinks that he might finally be as safe as possible, way out here in the hellhole that is Three.

* * *

 

“You wanna do _what_?” demands Mandy over breakfast.

Mickey grumbles something under his breath, thumbs at his lip, and takes a deep breath before explaining again.

“When it all goes down,” he says, speaking slow, “Three is gonna be the hardest. In the other sections, there is only a handful of guards that should be pretty easily overrun by our people. But Three’s gonna need all the help it can get.”

“So you’re going,” Mandy says. “To Three.”

“Me. Beto. Karen.”

At this Mandy whips around to scowl at Karen where she sits peeling an apple with a knife. She studiously does not look at Mandy, shoulders held high and tight in anticipation.

“The fuck, Karen?” Mandy hisses.

“Been waiting fucking years for Mickey to get his shit together and actually do something,” murmurs Karen, stabbing her apple. “Wracked up countless hours at the shooting range with Beto. Been dreaming, dreaming, _dreaming_ of a world where families stay together and babies aren’t ripped from their parents’ arms just because they were born in the wrong place. I’m fucking going.”

Mandy nods, reaching out to grab Karen’s hand where it rests on the table. Under the table, Ian mirrors the action and holds Mickey’s hand.   Mickey asks a silent question with a raised eyebrow. Ian answers with a nod, telling him to continue.

“Ian’s a maybe,” Mickey says. “So are Malik and Paco.”

For a moment it seems that Mandy’s too busy smiling soft at Karen to reply, but then she blinks twice and slowly turns to glare at Mickey.

“ _What_?” she snaps.

“Mandy, come on,” Ian says, hoping to stop her before she can get going. “It’s my choice.”

"No, no, no," says Mandy, shaking her head. "You going back to Three? Back to that hellhole? Absolutely not. No fucking way."

"It's really not your call, Mandy!"

"Someone's got to look out for you, Ian!" From across the table and their untouched breakfasts, Mandy glares at Mickey again. "You're shit at doing it yourself!"

"Fuck you," mutters Ian, stirring his applesauce with more force than necessary. That might’ve been true once, but it just isn’t anymore.

When he thinks revolution, when he speaks revolution, he’s not back on the floor of The Shed anymore, but returning to Three is _doing_ revolution. And he hasn’t decided.

It would be so empowering, to help take the section, to take back the power. But Three is his nightmare, the guards of Three something worse, and the whole thing could easily turn into a big, triggering mess.

Mickey, Doc B, even Mandy when she’s not so pissed, tell him to take care of himself first, and he will, but staying behind while Mickey goes into Three might be worse than going back himself.

"Okay, okay," says Mickey, absently rubbing the back of Ian's neck as he scowls at Mandy. "Nothing's getting decided today. Calm your tits, Big Bertha."

Mandy frowns, turning towards Karen. "Big Bertha?"

"The name we gave to a particularly finicky auger," Karen replies with a snort.

Mandy kicks Mickey under the table, misses, gets Ian in the shin, but at least she has the decency to look sorry.

Mickey gets up abruptly, hopping to stand on the bench seat. He sticks two fingers in his mouth, lets out a shrieking whistle, and the bustling cafeteria quiets around them.

“Yo,” he says. “Y’all know we’ve got guests coming in today. Gonna be camped out in the dinning hall here for the next couple days, talking shit out. Feel free to stop by, contribute, whatever. Just try to do it in shifts, check with your work lead for the day, so we don’t got too many people off two many jobs all at the same time. Big things are happening round here, folks. Now eat your fucking oatmeal.”

* * *

 

"I'm done," Ian says, spiting into the toilet. "Done, done. Fucking done."

"Done puking?" Mandy asks from the doorway, unwilling to get any closer to the reeking mess so recently expelled from his stomach.

"Done with the motherfucking meds, done."

Mandy sighs. "You just started. Doc B said—“

"Fuck Doc B," Ian says, pulling himself to his feet. His knees rattle together, black spots speckling his vision. The room swims, but Ian manages to steady himself, leaning against the sink and growling at Mandy as she rushes across the room to help. Always fucking helping. Always fucking nagging.

_Did you take your meds,_ Ian _? How about those meds,_ Ian _? How do you feel today,_ Ian _?_

The pills are not a cure. The pills are hard.

"Told you to eat breakfast." _Told you to eat breakfast,_ Ian.

"Wasn't fucking hungry."

"Yeah, well we both know that it makes you sick when you take that shit on an empty stomach."

For over a month, his best friend has done nothing but tell him what to do. It's like she's not even a person anymore, like she doesn't see him as a person anymore. She’s nothing but _I told you so_ and babying him and talking only about this illness, this motherfucking bipolar curse.

"Won't be a problem anymore," Ian says, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Done with the meds."

"We really have to fight about this every fucking day?"

"No. Because it's done. Done. Done. Just shut the fuck up about it, and we won't fight."

Mandy stares at him for a long moment as Ian works on stilling his shaking knees.

"Mickey wouldn't want you to quit," Mandy murmurs.

And even through the haze of these motherfucking meds, Ian gets pissed. He recognizes this blatant attempt to use Mickey, to use Ian's most sacred memories, the ones that are so good they might not even be true, to manipulate him into swallowing pills that make him sick and wrap him in cotton, stuffed down his throat, weaving through his stomach.

"You don't fucking get to do that," Ian snaps. "Shared something precious with you, trusted you with it, and now you're using Mickey to guilt me into following your bullshit treatment plan? The fuck, Mandy!"

"Ian, look—“

"Fuck you too," he hisses. Doesn't sound like his voice. Doesn't like who he is right now, with his head in a toilet and his best friend, the only family he has left, set on controlling his every move like the good guard she is.

Mandy stares at him, lip curled. She looks like Mickey again, so fierce and furious. She's so angry, red and shaking with it, that for a moment Ian thinks that he got it wrong, trusting Mandy with her ready laugh and her tragic past. For years he's ignored her black clothes and stun gun, but now she is so angry that Ian's positive that she's about to lash out. To hit him. To punish him for rules broken because that's what guards do.

"Fuck _you,_ too," Mandy says, backing up. "Don't need this shit."

And then she's fleeing, leaving Ian alone and shaking and miserable in her bathroom.

Mandy's rooming with Angela now, so it's been safe for Ian to stay with them while he's adjusting to the latest combination of pills sent from DC by Doctor Bianca.

The first round left him bed ridden and exhausted.

The second adjustment had a red rash blooming on his chest. Angela cut him off that one right away. Doc B’s orders.

And the current dosage, making him puke and turning the world to cotton.

It's stuffed in his ears, clogging his throat and plugging his nose. Through all this cotton, his senses aren't working right. He can't see or smell or hear or taste or _feel_ the way he should. It makes everything damp and dull, at least until he swallows his pills without eating first. Then his stomach churns and twists, his knees bruising as he drops down to vomit into the closest toilet, the bile burning. That's not cotton. That he feels.

Angela, one of the docs, is sitting on the end of her bed, fully dressed, expression blank, when Ian emerges from the bathroom. Ian doesn’t trust her, still doesn’t like the way Mandy pulled her in without talking to Ian first, but she doesn’t nag like Mandy. She just dutifully carries out the blood work and other medical crap requested by Doc B in the dead of night.

And she doesn't say anything now. Even with his cotton emotions, Ian's thankful for her quietness. On her way out, she hands him a bottle, finally talking when Ian sniffs the liquid inside and gives her a confused look.

"It'll help settle your stomach," she explains. “No caffeine though.”

Ian nods and doesn't let himself think of yesterdays fight, when Mandy glared at him as he took a second cup of shitty coffee at breakfast and then yelled at him about it after, cornering him on his way to the butcher room.

Left alone in the room, Ian considers his options for the rest of the day. It's just Mandy and Kevin expecting him at work. Despite her anger, Ian's sure she won't report him if he chooses to curl up in her bed and never move again.

But he tried that two days ago and spent hours unsuccessfully chasing sleep, giving him too much time to focus on nothing but breathing through his cotton nose and thinking through his cotton brain and wishing Mickey were there to hold him.  

He goes to work instead

* * *

 

First it’s two figures, emerging from the woods, one in black and the other in brown.

Ian once emerged from a similar spot, drawn by Eighteen’s lights and searching for salvation. Little did he know Mickey was right here looking, the whole fucking time.

That part still stings. That part, Mickey might forever be bitter about. “You were so fucking close for _years_!” he said after Ian’s Great Confession. “Right through the goddamn fucking woods? Fuck! Fuck! _Fuck_!” It might’ve been the worst part, right along with all the other terrible parts.

The people who emerge from woods are not frantic, and not manic, like Ian was, but they’re definitely working on salvation.

"Ian?" The prisoner in brown approaches, her fast walk morphing into a run as she gets closer. He stares at the small woman, her features nearly unchanged even after all these years.

"Ethel?" Ian replies a moment before she throws her arms around his neck. "Holy shit."

"How’re you here?" she says as she steps back, hands still on his shoulders as she studies him. "They sent you to Three. Thought for sure you'd lose some fingers or maybe your life, but here you are! Whole!"

"Got transferred to Eighteen a couple months ago," Ian replies, almost blushing.

"Ah, I see," Ethel says, eyeing Mickey behind him. She smiles just like she used to.

"This is Mickey," Ian says, resting his hand on Mickey's shoulder. Ethel smiles even wider.

"We've met," Ethel says, nodding hello.

"Been over there a lot," Mickey says, thumbing at his lip. "These last couple years." He said that too, after Ian’s Confession. How close he’d been to people who knew Ian, how he somehow failed to ask the right people if they’d seen any tall-ass red heads. How easily eleven years could have become just one or two.

"So good to see you," Ethel says. "Both of you."

"You too," Ian replies, really meaning it.

Mickey introduces The Captain of Seventeen, Jasmine. She’s bright and bubbly and obviously adores Mickey. She hugs Ian like Ethel did, but he doesn’t really like it as much.

* * *

 

Next, it’s Estefania.

The Captain of Twenty-One arrives on horseback less than an hour later. She talks rapidly in Spanish to her companion, a large prisoner on a large horse. Her voice is so loud for someone so small and she gestures wildly with her hands, flicking the reigns nonsensically. The horse, apparently used to this, ignores her.

She slides out of the saddle and kisses Mickey on each cheek without a break in the Spanish. Mickey, somehow, replies in Spanish. That’s new.

“Ian,” Mickey says, a hand on the small of his back, pulling him close. “This is Estefania. And Marco, I bet? Heard a lot about you, man.”

“You too,” says Marco, nodding as he dismounts.

Estefania squeals, nods a lot at Mickey as she talks, and then pulls Marco down for a deep kiss with too much tongue.

“Can you keep it in your pants for ten fucking seconds, please?” Mickey snaps. “Fuck.”

“No sé. ¿Puedes tu?”

“Speak fucking English,” Mickey insists.

“Does your boy not speak Spanish?” she asks. “He must learn. Beto taught you so well.”

“He can understand you now. Maybe talk to him. Fuck, Este, have some fucking manners.”

“Hello, Ian,” she says, syrupy sweet. “You’re husband’s a grumpy little goose.”

An irritated Mickey is an adorable one and Ian grins, even as Estefania shrieks again, throwing herself at Beto as he wanders around the side of the stables.

* * *

 

Last is a hovercraft, holding people from Four and Eight.

The famed Sully descends the ramp first and heads straight for Mickey without even glancing at Ian.

"M!" he says, smirking.

"Fuck you," replies Mickey as Sully wraps him up in a crushing hug. Mickey pats Sully on the back once and then shoves him away even though it looks like Sully would be content to go on hugging Mickey indefinitely.

"Big things are a happening," Sully says with eyes only for Mickey.

"Yeah," Mickey agrees, reaching out for Ian's hand. Ian grabs on too tight, suddenly insecure. Sully's face is too attractive and he looks at Mickey too intently. "I know. This is Ian."

"Holy shit!" says Sully, pointing at Ian. "You! Tall. Red head. Green eyes. Pale. Freckles. Fucking alien looking."

"The fuck?" says Ian, pushing a little closer to Mickey.

"Never called him alien looking," Mickey mutters.

"Absolutely fucking did," says Sully, still grinning at Ian. "This guy, he's been looking for you for _years_. Every time we saw each other, every year, before even hello he is all 'you get any prisoner transfers for tall, red heads?' And look! Here you are!"

Despite his discomfort, Ian smiles at Mickey, pleased to see him already smiling back. "Here I am," agrees Ian.

"Yo," says Sully, once more focused on Mickey. "We got the Captain of Four."

"What?" demands Mickey.

"Well, didn't so much as _get_ her. Guess Four's been plotting its own mini revolution for years. Planning on going totally independent from Chicago on it's own. Not much different than our plan, really, except Four’s big enough to do it on their own and keep themselves going on trade with the east themselves. Got this scary stockpile of weapons, too. Just found out about it. Somehow word got to Linda, the captain, that I've been talking to the guards. Doing my thing you know? She wants to talk to you. Gotta get her a Lip Login. Think she might want to join us."

Mickey, just blinks a lot, still keeps on blinking as three more people descend the ramp. With Mickey only capable of blinking, it’s on Ian to introduce himself to Peg, a prisoner from Four who might be the oldest person Ian’s ever seen out here.   She’s followed by captain Gail and prisoner Jackie, both from Eight.

“The shit?” Mickey finally says, shaking out his shoulders. “Linda. _Linda_. What the shit Four?”

“Yeah,” says Sully. “We got lots to talk about.”

* * *

 

Kev notices Ian's cotton mood, and doesn't chat like he normally does. Most days Kev’s all jokes and wistful stories about his life back in Chicago, with his hot wife and his job in a restaurant, but he somehow knows when Ian needs quiet.

Mandy's there, sitting in a chair by the door with a tablet in her lap, studiously not looking at Ian. Ian doesn't look at her either.

He slices through flanks of beef, the cuts almost familiar now. He barely needs to look at the diagram that shows where to put his knife now that he's been at it for a few months.

The knife is heavy in his hand, sticky with blood. It would be so easy to prick himself, to slice open his left palm like he did to his right all those years ago, to give himself matching scars.

Last time, Ian just wanted to see if he could feel anything, if the physical pain could outmatch the mental misery of depression. Now he wants to slice through the cotton, to dig around in his flesh to prove that it's actually his. This is his hand. It could bleed his blood. The pain would jerk him back to reality, make it easier to breathe through the cotton.

Only it didn't work last time. Probably won't work this time either.

On his way to the fridge, Kev clasps him on the shoulder. The gesture is friendly, Kev’s silent way of letting Ian know that he's here, that he cares. Kev's strong, the slap stings, and it's nothing like slicing open his left palm to match his right, but it’s enough.

* * *

 

For five days, there is lots of talk.

All the talk is exhausting, and Ian’s so fucking relieved when all the visitors go home (except Ethel, he’ll miss Ethel). He groans when he finally crawls into bed. It’s a joy to finally be alone with Mickey, but his hopes are immediately dashed when Mickey starts typing on his tablet.

“Mick.”

“One sec.”

“ _Mickey_.”

“Hold on.”

Ian huffs, ducking beneath the sheets and navigating the blankets until he settles between Mickey’s tights. Mickey remains frustratingly distracted by his fucking tablet and his fucking revolution. He provides no help at all, doesn’t even lift his hips as Ian tugs at his boxers.

Ian nips at the inside of Mickey’s thigh. That gets his attention.

“The fuck, Ian?” Mickey says, wiggling around and then trapping Ian between his legs. “You got no patience. None at all.”

“Can’t believe you do. I’m a little offended, honestly.”

“You wanna suck me off while I’m talking to your brother? That’s really what you’re about right now?”

“You’re talking to Lip?” And Ian sits up too fast, his head smacking into the tablet in Mickey’s hands. “Ow! Fuck.”

“Shit,” Mickey says, laughing only a little bit as they both struggle to free Ian from the tangle of sheets and thighs.

He ends up with his head free, sprawled out on Mickey.

“You okay there, tough guy?” he murmurs, fingers running through Ian’s hair, looking for bumps.  

“Yeah, _now_. With you now paying more attention to me than my brother.”

Mickey rolls his eyes and then finally kisses him, but only for a minute before the tablet’s pinging. This time it’s Ian pulling away, Ian distracted, Ian needing to at least say goodnight to his brother after so many years of not being able to.

Mickey groans as Ian pulls away, holds him tight as he reaches for the tablet. He skims the conversation so far, Mickey giving Lip the highlights of the plan they just spent the last five days hashing out.

And then there is Lip, replying from hundreds of miles away.

LG: this is a good plan

LG: I approve

LG: we’ll be there soon

“Uh,” Ian says, reading the last message three times before he trusts that his brain got it right. “Mick?”

He pushes the tablet under Mickey’s nose. He reads it even more times than Ian did before he reacts.

“The fuck does that mean?” Mickey asks, sitting up and dislodging Ian from his very comfortable position so he can better stare at his tablet. “’ _We’ll be there soon?’_ ” he reads. “Where is there? Is it here?”

“Guess so,” Ian replies, equally flummoxed.

“And ‘we?’” He goes back to reading the message a few more times. “Who the fuck is ‘we?’”

“Dunno, Mick.”

“Who the fuck is ‘ _we_ ,’ Ian?” Mickey’s yelling now. As far as Ian’s concerned, there is only one very likely candidate for that “we” and Mickey’s apparently figured it out too. “If ‘we’ is who I think it is, I’m gonna kill him. Your brother is a dead man.”

“At least let me give him a hug first.”

* * *

 

It's only Mandy in the room she shares with Angela when Ian sneaks in after lights out. She's still awake, obviously waiting for him. She has his evening dose laid out next to a glass of water on her beside table.

"Not taking that shit," Ian says, chin out, defiant.

"Your choice," Mandy says, shrugging.

It's such a change from her normal reaction – _you will do what I fucking say and take your pills_ , Ian – that he is immediately suspicious. Is this her current manipulation technique? When using Mickey didn't work this morning, is she trying something new?

"It is?" he says, hating the smallness of his voice.

"Yeah," she says, sighing. "Been doing this all wrong. Sorry about being such a naggy bitch."

"Not a bitch," he says, crossing the room to sit on the edge of her bed.

"Just a nag, then?" she asks, cracking a smile.

Ian almost smiles back, shrugs.

"Look," she says, crossing her legs beneath her and turning towards him. "It's hard, figuring these meds out. And it's not fair, that the whole process is slowed down because your doc is so far away and it takes so long for her to send out the changes. It's bullshit. That the meds fuck you up. That you have to take them at all to get your brain to calm the fuck down. That we have to do it in secret, through a slow as fuck pipeline. It's bullshit, Ian. And it's not fucking fair and it fucking sucks and I'm sorry I've been such a fucking nag."

Ian lets out a shaky breath, tries not to cry when Mandy reaches out to rub his shoulder.

"You know your choices," Mandy continues. "Been doing this long enough to know what your life will be like without working on this. Know that it will be the same old shit, trying to stay out of trouble and fucking the goddamn captain to find a little safety."

Ian swallows, skin crawling. He’s so far away from Mickey, gets a little farther every time he ends up in Ned's bed. He tells himself that it's like insurance, sacrificing now so he'll be safe later. He told himself that when he ran to the bathroom and threw up after the last time, it was the meds and nothing more.

"Shouldn't of said that thing about Mickey," Mandy whispers and the sound of his name, spoken out loud so rarely, coming loud and clear through his cotton ears, really does make Ian cry. "Shouldn't of done that. Won't try to force you into anything again. It's your choice, and I get that now."

He's really been horrible to Mandy. All she's done in the last few months, has been to help Ian get better. To help him cope. For once, Ian is glad that Mickey isn't here because Ian's pretty sure that he would be horrible to Mickey like he's been horrible to Mandy. At least Mickey doesn't have to see Ian like this, doesn't have to fret over meds and tell Ian what to do.

"Can't do it anymore, Mandy," Ian confesses, sniffling. "Just so fucking exhausted." Two years coping at Seventeen, three years struggling here. That’s five years spent terrified of his own mind and the trouble it gets him into, five years aching for his family, missing Mickey and Lip.

All routes lead to exhaustion. Figuring out the meds is fucking work, is fucking hard. Surviving Three without getting thrown in The Shed is just as tiring.

At least with the meds, there is the chance it'll get better. With the meds, he might one day wake up feeling rested and maybe not happy, but at least content with what he has. Content to have Mandy as family, other prisoners to sit with in the cafeteria, thanks to Kev.  

"I know," Mandy whispers, wrapping him in a hug so he can cry into her neck. "I know."

Ian takes his meds.

* * *

 

“Mandy.” He touches her elbow after dinner, talking to her directly for the first time since they fought about Ian going to Three. With everything that’s been going on, it was too easy to not talk to her, but he misses his best friend.

She turns to look at him, face blank.

“Roof?” he suggests, giving her his very best pleading facial expression.

Mandy sighs, nods, and they make the journey in silence but Mandy speaks the moment she sits down.

“Sorry,” she says. “Still don’t think you should go, but I was too mean about it.”

“Thanks,” Ian replies. “But it really ain’t up to you.”

“I know.”

“If I say I can handle it you got to trust me to handle it.”

“I know.”

Ian bumps Mandy’s shoulder, making her smile, forgiving her and so done with this fight. “Missed you.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You should tell me a story. Bout your mom.” And it might’ve taken years for Mandy to tell him anything about her past, but since she did there’s nothing she enjoys quite like she enjoys talking about her mom.

“Yeah?” Mandy perks up, beams at him. “Which one?”

“Any one.”

* * *

 

MM: its me

MM: its Ian

LG: hey, little brother

LG: glad its you

LG: mickey just nags me

MM: well you could answer a few of his questions

LG: DO ANSWER HIS QUESTIONS!

LG: told him what he needs to know

LG: when I’m thinking we’ll get there, what I want to do with the internet before mickey goes all revolution on pop com’s asses

MM: might be nice to know who this we is

LG: don’t worry about it

MM: come on Lip!

LG: see you soon, twin!!

LG: LOVE YOU AND GOODNIGHT

MM: fuck, you’re an asshole

MM: love you too

* * *

 

_Soon_ turns out to be three weeks.

_We_ turns out to be Lip, a teenager, and two women.

A whole mess of people wait out front on the morning Lip’s supposed to arrive. Shelia, Karen, and Beto all stand silently, serious while Ian is only giddy. Apparently this is a very big deal for Shelia, who doesn't tend to go outside much. She stands with a hand on the side of the building.

Mandy wanders over from somewhere, yawning widely and standing close to Karen, flashing Ian a smile that is supposed to be reassuring but ends in another yawn.

Paco joins them too, looking bashful, staring at Mickey like he fully expects Mickey to tell him to get lost, to get back to work. Mickey only spares him a glance and a quick nod before he goes back to staring at the road.

Ian’s twitchy. He needs to see his brother. The anticipation of these last few weeks catches up with him and his muscles ache. He shakes and thinks he could pace away this tension, but touching Mickey is a more dire need.

They stand together despite the heat, Mickey's back pressed to his front. Chin hooked over Mickey's shoulder, Ian stands there with his arms wrapped around Mickey's waist. Mickey’s arms crossed over his chest and occasionally of his hands wanders to swipe at his mouth or squeeze Ian’s forearm. Ian sways them slightly, needing to move.

"Who you here for, Pac?" Karen murmurs, disturbing the silence of the morning.

"Always liked Yev," Paco replies. "He's a good kid."

"Damn fucking right," Mickey mutters. "And he better not get out of that Humvee or Lip's a dead man."

Ian rolls his eyes and holds Mickey a little tighter.

When the Humvee appears on the road between the trees, Ian can't breathe. Mickey's hand rests on his forearm and he tries to loosen his grip on Mickey's waist, but can’t do that either.

An eternity passes and before the Humvee even comes to a full stop before them, the back door is opening. An unfamiliar woman with brown, curly hair and tears in her eyes climbs out.

"Holy shit," says Mickey.

She smiles big, waving a little as she steps aside and holds the door open. A tall, lanky teenager spills out next. He barely gets his feet underneath him before he's barreling towards Mickey, grinning hard.

"Motherfucker," Mickey mutters. Ian lets him go and takes a step back in time for the kid – Yev – to wrap Mickey up in a hug that lifts him off the ground.

"Hey, Dad!" says Yev.

"Shit," says Mickey, failing to sound gruff through his sudden sniffles. He hugs Yev back when his feet once more find the ground.

“Hi, Ian,” says the kid a second later, beaming. He uses Mickey shoulder as an armrest and Mickey looks too stunned to get grumpy about it. “Heard all about you. You’re nicer than Mick, aren’t you? Totally called it.”

And Ian laughs as Mickey pulls Yev down in a headlock, ruffling is hair.

Ian’s so enthralled with this reunion – Mickey really did raise a kid, here’s the proof – that he doesn't notice more people getting out of the Humvee until a door slams.

He turns and there is a second dark haired woman smiling at him, but more importantly, there is Lip, looking exactly the same and totally different, shuffling his feet and trying to flatten his ever-fluffy hair. Ian gapes for too long, staring at his brother, his twin, marveling over his broad shoulders and stubbly jaw. He’s got smile lines around his eyes in the same place Ian’s got smile lines around his eyes, and they look more alike now than they did growing up.

Lip grins and Ian grins back, letting out a strange, delighted laugh, before they both move at the same time to cross the distance between them.

Ian gets to hug his brother again. Lip is solid and real, healthy and safe, and he chuckles a little when Ian starts to cry against his shoulder.

"You goddamn giant," Lip says, his voice deeper and rich. He's crying, too. "You got tall!"

Ian pulls back a little to study his brother's face, noting the lines forming around his mouth, probably from too much smirking. "You got old," Ian replies.

Lip laughs again, the sound so fucking familiar Ian can feel his heart expanding in his chest, his lungs filling with joy. Finally getting enough air after so long going without.

"Two minutes older than you, little brother."

"I'm nineteen now!" A few feet away, Yev is yelling at Mickey. "Can't tell me what to do!"

"Do you know how easily this could all go to shit!" Mickey yells right back. "Don't want you anywhere near it. And you, Miss fucking Fiona," Mickey says, turning to yell at the first dark haired woman as she gives Shelia a hug. "Don't you got a kid to be raising? What about Ellie?"

Fiona. Ian’s heard all about Fiona.

"She's safe in Boston with Jimmy," Fiona says. Her chin juts out, stubborn and strong and obviously someone who's gone toe to toe with Mickey before. "Couldn't just sit on my ass and do nothing, not after all the work we put in to change things. Gotta see this through. Same as you, Mickey."

"Yeah," agrees Yev, mimicking Fiona's stance and presenting a front united against Mickey. “Same as you.”

Mickey presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, muttering to himself for a moment before his head snaps up to glare at Lip.

"Hey, asshole," says Lip, smirking.

Mickey rushes over to them, smacking Lip once in the arm before pulling him into a hug. Mickey reaches out an arm, blindly searching out for Ian until he latches on to his elbow, dragging Ian into a group hug. Ian presses his nose into Mickey's cheek and gets an arm around his twin.

Behind him, he hears Karen introducing Mandy to Fiona as Beto, Paco, and Yev chat happily in Spanish. It all washes over him, the sounds of the family Mickey made at his back. Mickey and Lip, the family they made when they were still so small, right here in his arms.

* * *

 

The second dark haired woman introduces herself as “Amanda, bringer of the internet and Lip’s fiancé.”

Ian does not know what a fiancé is, has no fucking clue, but judging by his downturned mouth and furrowed eyebrows, neither does Mickey.  Lip just smiles indulgently, wrapping an arm around her waist.

Amanda’s accent is strange and she’s got a big smile for Ian as she kisses both his cheeks before she kisses both Mickey's. She adjusts her glasses, tucks her thick hair behind her ears, and glances at Lip every few seconds like she has a hard time not looking at him.

They end up in the dinning hall, crowded close together, Shelia insisting on feeding everyone even though breakfast ended an hour ago.

It’s so bizarre, to see Yev and Fiona at the end of the table, and feel like he knows them because he knows their stories. It’s even stranger to look at Lip directly across from him, and wonder if he does still know his brother, his twin, now that he’s almost thirty and involved with this woman instead of seventeen and incapable of being with anyone longer than a couple weeks.

But under the table, Mickey holds his hand and across the table sits his brother, his twin, happy and healthy. Lip leans close and whispers in Amanda's ear, then grins at Ian, so it’s not that strange.

Mostly just wonderful, really.

"The fuck were you thinking, huh?" Mickey says to Lip when there is the lull in conversation. Shelia delivers trays of eggs and potatoes as Fiona passes out plates. "Bringing them back here?"

"Not up to me," Lip says, shrugging. "They made their own choice."

"You gotta relax, old man," Yev says, digging into his food.

Mickey actually growls and Ian tries not to laugh. He understands Mickey’s fear just like he understands Yev’s need to be here for this. Mostly, he’s just selfishly thrilled to meet the bright kid Mickey raised.

"Look," says Lip settling his fork down. "We’re all as much a part of this as you and we want to help, want to see it through. We’re with you, M. Deal with it."

"Don't fucking call me that," Mickey says with a groan.

Lip just smirks and this time the name doesn’t make Ian angry.

One by one, people leave for work or to reacquaint themselves with their home. Fiona follows Karen to the sewing room while Shelia slips back into the kitchen where she is finally working full time, now that Ian’s trained enough not to piss Karen off too badly with his incompetence. Yev drags Paco to the orchard, needing to see for himself that Mickey didn’t “fuck up my trees.”

Mickey stares after Yev as he walks off and Ian bumps him with a shoulder. “Go on. You know you want to.”

Mickey looks faintly embarrassed as he stands and presses a kiss to Ian’s forehead.

“I am going with you,” Amanda says, standing too. “I think the twins need a little time to catch up.”

And Ian wasn’t sure about his brother’s _fiancé_ – whatever the fuck that is – a minute ago, with the odd way she draws out her words and elongates her phrases, but now he decides he likes her. She’s giving him alone time with his twin. It feels like a gift.

“Come on,” Lip says when Mickey and Amanda disappear out the door. “Got work to do.”

* * *

 

Ian's never been in a Humvee before, and as Lip drives them around to the back of the main compound building, crawling along slower than Ian could jog, he looks at all the buttons, fascinated. Lip's so confident behind the wheel, like driving a fucking Humvee is a perfectly typical part of his average day. Ian wants to know all the details of Lip's life, the little, seemingly irrelevant things that Lip would never think to tell him over their frequent typed out conversations. And big things too, like Amanda.

"What're you looking for?" Ian asks as Lip leans forward to better study the world out the windshield.

"That," he says, pointing to a rickety ladder that appears to lead up to the tallest part of the building, a different roof than the one Ian uses to hang out with Mandy.

They get out of the Humvee, both standing at the base of the ladder and craning their necks to see the top.

"You wanna climb that?" Ian asks.

Lip nods solemnly. "Who designed this piece of shit? There's no way to get up there from inside. Only this tall as fuck ladder. Fucking ridiculous."

"Yeah."

"Better get climbing."

Lip loads him up with a pack on his back, full of tools and metal and wires. Lip's got a similar load and he starts climbing, Ian sighing before he follows.

The climb isn't as bad as Ian assumed it would be, especially when they get to the top, dumping their packs as they take in the view.

"Holy shit," Lip says, turning in a slow circle.

"Not bad," Ian replies, recognizing the silos of Seventeen in the distance. "You gonna put me to work? Building whatever it is you’re gonna build to get the internet up?"

"Naw," Lip says. "You were always useless at shit like this."

"That sure hasn't changed," Ian says, wincing as he remembers the horrible morning he spent with Roberta in the shop where he completely failed at helping her maintain all the farming tools.

Instead they end up sitting at the edge of the roof. Lip's got a bottle full of carrot juice and they pass it back and forth.

"So what the fuck’s a fiancé?" Ian asks.

“Means you’re engaged. To be married.”

“ _Married?”_ Despite all the daydreaming Ian did of Lip happy with a partner, now that the reality is in front of him, he can’t imagine it. “And you never thought to mention her?”

“Just… couldn’t. Wanted you to meet her. Wanted to see your face when I told you I’d found someone. Nearly typed it out countless times, but I just couldn’t fucking tell you like that.”

“Guess I get that. Married, though? Really?”

"She's fucking brilliant, man," Lip replies, smiling. "Can't resist."

"Such a fucking grown up," Ian teases. "The mighty Lip, finally settling down."

"Whatever. Not all of us find our soul mate at twelve. You've basically been married your whole damn life."

Lip is back and Mickey is here and Ian got to meet Yevgeny today, got to meet Fiona, got to meet his new sister. And maybe on any other day he’d choke on the bitterness of all the years he was separated from Mickey. But today he just looks at the orchard and nods.

“You look so fucking good, brother,” Ian whispers. “Better than I imagined.”

“What’d you imagine?”

“Oh, you eternally seventeen with that terrible haircut.”

Lip throws his head back and laughs. Ian remembers what his twin looks like when he smiles, when he laughs, and he works on memorizing the expression better this time.

“But engaged though? The fuck is that about?”

Lip blushes a little, tries to shrug it off. "It's just what they do out there. Making it all official and shit. Instead of just having a conversation in private, people watch you exchange vows. Completely horrifying."

Ian and Mickey didn't even do the conversation part. Shelia called them married. Ian grinned at Mickey. Mickey rolled his eyes and ran his hand through Ian's hair, nodding a little. It's enough for Ian. He doesn't think its possible, to be more committed than him and Mickey.

"So that's what you've signed up for?" Ian says, trying to bridge the divide between the seventeen-year-old brother he knew, and this pre-married man that's sitting next to him.

"Guess so," Lip says. "Doesn't have to be a big, fancy affair. Some people just go do the legal stuff, say vows in front of some official. Amanda’s parents want that, though, the big fancy affair with all their big fancy friends. And I figured I might need to give them that, since they wouldn’t get other shit they wanted.”

“Yeah?” Ian whispers, not sure if he wants to know. He wants Lip’s life to have been all good things, flourishing and happy and finding a brilliant woman to love.

“It’s better out there, you know?” he says, staring straight ahead and not looking at Ian. “None of the procreation laws. Fair trials. No directly depending on slave labor to feed the city, although they get most of their food from Chicago. Still a lot of pressure to have kids, but they help you actually raise them. Free health care, paid leave, free child care. But even with all that, there are still a lot of people who think _natural_ babies are better somehow. Total bullshit. If we went through a clinic to get pregnant our kid would be perfect, just as good as one that come from a couple straight people sticking it to each other.”

“Fuck. So what? You were gonna get fancy married so Amanda’s parents wouldn’t mind the clinic thing?”

Lip shrugs again. “Just didn’t like seeing her fight with her parents. They actually raised her, Ian. They were around and sure they’re assholes, but they ain’t assholes like Frank. Or fuck, _Terry_.”

“Huh.” Ian leans back on his hands, considering. The Free Cities out east always seemed like idyllic little havens to him, perfect and nearly divine. He never thought they’d have problems like Lip is describing.

Everything is more complicated than Ian once thought. Just a few months ago it was all survival and now its Mickey and the revolution and his twin, eleven years older and almost married.

“Doesn’t matter now,” Lip says, sighing. “Mickey finally found you and you know what Amanda said? When I told her?”

“What?”

“’We have got to get out there, Lip,” Lip says, perfectly mimicking Amanda’s accent. “We have got to get out there to your brother and Mickey. Immediately.”

And Ian likes Amanda even more. “Sounds like a keeper. So what is all this shit for?”

And Lip is off, detailing his complex plans to give The Farmland it’s own internet that will not go down when the revolution finally gets going. It’s a little dizzying, but Lip gets excited about technological shit like he always has and Ian could listen to him babble all night. He wonders if Mickey is getting a similar earful from Amanda, because it sounds like this plan is as much hers as it is Lip’s. If not more so.

But eventually Lip talks himself out and they fall silent, enjoying the view and the company.

“How bad was it?” Lip whispers.

“Bad,” Ian confesses. “Really bad at first. But I figured out how to survive. The last couple years were okay. Finding Mickey was better.”

“You can tell me about it,” Lip says. “If you want.”

“Not today,” Ian replies. “Today lets just be happy.”

“Does the revolution count as happy? Have you decided if you’re gonna head out back to Three with Mickey?”

“Would you call me crazy if I said I was leaning towards going?”

“Fuck no. Call you brave.”

* * *

 

The newbie is unlucky like Kev was unlucky. Three is like super punishment. You get sent to The Farmland for breaking Pop Com rules and you get sent to Three when you didn't learn that lesson. The work is more dangerous, the guards more malicious, and Ian doesn't want to know where they take you if even Three doesn't teach you to obey.

But for a few unlucky newbies, Three needs bodies when they get taken, so they get sent here. That's what happened to Kev, although he doesn't seem to have a particular problem hauling around giant flanks of meat and staying safe.

The newbie’s gonna be a problem.

He’s young like Ian once was young and all through every night of his first week, he cries, not even bothering to stifle his sobbing in a pillow.

On the eighth night Ian catches sight of him with both eyes swollen up and lip bleeding. His crying ceases and Ian wonders who beat him silent, the guards or one of the groups of the meaner slaughters, tired of the kid's cries keeping them up at night.

Ian sees something familiar in the kid, how his pupils blow wide and he talks a million miles a minute, even when no one is listening.

It keeps him up at night, indecision over what to do about this newbie whose name he doesn't even know. Maybe point him in Kash's direction? At least that way he’ll have a warm bed, somewhere safe to sleep. Kash is tolerable, at least until the newbie can manage to catch Ned’s eye. The captain at least hears no and shrugs off the rejection. Ian claimed a headache not too long ago, and Ned just yawned, turned off the lights, and pressed himself into Ian’s back.

Maybe he should talk this out with Mandy, write up a list of the newbie's symptoms and send then to Doc B, get him a diagnosis and some meds. But how could they possibly pay for more meds? Mandy takes all the risks, brewing an absurd amount of shine for the alcoholics at Eighteen in exchange for the marijuana that serves as currency for Ian's meds.

He still doesn't understand why Mandy does what she does, saves him like she saves him, and he could never ask her to do more, not for some stranger.

Helping strangers is not the way to survive.

Ian can only focus on surviving Three himself. There is no room for the newbie.

In the end, Ian makes no decisions before the kid loses it, starts pulling out his hair during dinner. He gets hauled away by three guards, screaming nothing that makes sense, and Ian doesn't see him again.

* * *

 

"Yev's probably keeping him up a tree," Karen says when she catches Ian staring lonely at the door to the dinning hall. Mickey usually meets him here for lunch, but now he's a whole five minutes late.

"What?"

"Captain," Karen says, stabbing her salad. "And Yev. Probably distracted by a tree. The kid might be more obsessed with the orchard than Mickey. They're probably going over every fucking branch together."

Ian spent the day with black fabric, sewing new, dark clothes for the prisoners planning on going to Three with Mickey. For that night everyone will wear black, blending into the night.

Ian's hands are tired and he still can't decide and his brother is here, but there is so little time to just be together when everyone has so much work to do. Ian has black clothes to sew. Lip has an internet tower to construct. Mickey has trees to inspect.

Ian's tired and he really needs to sit close to Mickey.

He wastes another minute dithering over his meal before he gives up. Karen snickers at him as he retreats back into the kitchen. Shelia is way ahead of him. She already has containers of food in a basket.

"Didn't think they'd make it in here today," she says, beaming at Ian as she hands over the basket. "Be a dear and run this out to them, would you?"

It doesn't take long to find them in the orchard. There is a whole string of orchard workers, shaking their heads and pointing Ian in the right direction.

Yev’s at the base of a tree, head tilted back, arms crossed over his chest in a stance that is so very Mickey. He's staring up at a tree. The branches are rustling and that must be Mickey's doing.

"It's fine." And that’s Mickey’s voice.

"You sure?" Yev demands.

"Pretty fucking sure," Mickey yells back. He's so high it makes Ian dizzy. "Just some beetles. Harmless."

"Might be a fungus."

"Not a fucking fungus. Will you relax?"

"Don't think you're looking in the right spot. Go higher."

From the tree there is more rustling and Mickey's indistinct grumbling as he follows Yev's instructions.

"Fuck, you're making him go higher?" Ian says, gaping as he catches glimpses of Mickey as he climbs.

"Hey," says Yev, grinning at Ian. This is the closest Ian's come to being alone with the kid since they showed up a couple days ago and he's suddenly not sure what to say.

For a moment they just look at each other, nodding and shuffling their feet.

"Brought lunch," Ian finally says, holding up the basket Shelia prepared.

"It's already lunch?" Yev asks, eyes going wide. "Shit, Mick’s gonna be pissed. Made me promise to remind him to go in. Something about having a lunch date."

Yev grins at him, delighted, and Ian does really remember what it was like to be that free with his happiness. Technically Ian’s a stranger, but Yev is bright and happy around him anyway. Ian can really only be like that with Mickey, and maybe Lip, maybe Mandy.

He's hit again with what a good fucking job Mickey did with this kid. When Ian was his age, he was alone and broken and defeated. Yev's spirit was never crushed. Yev was never broken and alone. And that's on Mickey.

There’s a thump behind them, Mickey's boots landing in the dirt. "It's fucking fine," he declares. He's talking to Yev but staring at Ian, smiling just a little.

"If you're sure."

"Fucking sure." Mickey brushes off his sleeveless shirt, moving closer to Ian. "Hey. Did I miss lunch?"

"No," replies Ian, leaning down to kiss Mickey's cheek and pulling a twig from his hair. "Got it right here."

"Fucking starving," Yev says, grabbing the basket and plunking right down in the dirt as he digs in.

"Got caught up," Mickey says, talking to and looking at Ian now. "Sorry."

Ian just smiles and kisses Mickey before tugging him down to sit around their lunch with Yev.

"What work you doing?" Yev asks, nodding at Ian as he eats. "Thought you'd be out here with Mick."

"Eh," says Ian, shrugging. "Not really my thing."

“He’s a natural in the sewing room,” Mickey says.

“Nice,” replies Yev, turning back to Mickey. “You sure its harmless?”

“Yes, Yevgeny! Fuck.”

And then they’re back to bickering.

Ian looks at Yev and sees Mickey in the way he tilts his head and squishes his eyebrows together and talks with his hands when he's flustered. With Yevgeny around, Mickey seems older. Being a parent makes Mickey seem like an actual grown up in a way that bossing people around in the orchard and coordinating a massive, section-wide revolt just does not.

Ian didn't think it was possible but the kid seems even more intensely protective than Mickey when it comes to the orchard and Ian could not care less about whatever they’re arguing over, but the cadence of it is pleasing. They’re so comfortable together and it’s a joy to see.

Plus, distracting Mickey from the argument, playing with his belt loops just above his ass is pretty entertaining. Yev huffs and rolls his eyes when Mickey trails off mid sentence when Ian's fingers make contact with the skin under his shirt.

Eventually, Yev and Mickey come to some sort of agreement on how to spend the afternoon with the trees. They get silent, more interested in lunch now. Mickey takes a moment to press a kiss into Ian's shoulder before really digging in.

"When you gonna tell me about your mom, Yevgeny?" Mickey asks after a few minutes.

Yev immediately tenses, his face hard and his lunch forgotten. "Nothing to tell."

"Oh really?" Mickey pushes.

"Yeah, fucking really. Far as I'm concerned, I don't got no fucking mom."

"What happened?" Mickey asks. He's gentle, cajoling, ready to listen, and Ian wipes his mouth to hide a smile. This conversation is serious and no time to be grinning over Mickey's parenting.

"Nothing. She's selfish and she's a coward and I want fuck all to do with her."

Mickey grimaces. "Still your mom."

"She's not. Lip told me about your dad. He still your dad after he hit you? Hated you because you love Ian? He still your fucking dad after all that?"

"Okay," says Mickey, wincing and nodding. "Okay, kid. You're right. Just wish you tell me about it, is all."

"You know," Yev says, stabbing his salad even as he glares at the ground. Despite Mickey backing off, Yev seems angrier now. "The fuck is your problem? Sending me away, trying to pawn me off on some other, shittier parent, not wanting me to come home. If you're done with me, then just fucking say so."

Ian almost wants to laugh at how wrong he is. Mickey doesn't let go of the people he loves, Ian sitting here’s proof of that, and Yev is obviously family.

"You been thinking this bullshit since you went to Boston?" Mickey asks, horrified.

Yev holds Mickey gaze for a moment, trying to scowl. He can't manage it for long and a moment later he sighs. "No. Don't really think that. Might just be trying to guilt you into taking me along to Three."

And now Mickey is scowling. "You ain't going to Three."

“Yes I am! Done letting you tell me where to go. I’m going.”

“Nope.”

“Yes.”

“Hell no.”

“Hell yes!”

"Look, kid, you ain't fucking going. It's dangerous enough you being out here when this shit goes down and there's no way in hell you’re walking into the thick of it untrained."

"But—“

"Yevgeny," Mickey growls. "I swear to fuck, I would rather call off the whole goddamn revolution than bring you along to Three. You ain't going!"

"Shit!" Yev says, throwing his hands up in the air. The gesture is frustrated, but Mickey obviously won this argument. "You fucking _suck_."

Mickey rolls his eyes. "Okay, bean sprout. You just focus on helping Lip with all that internet shit, alright?"

Yev grimaces, kicking the dirt. "Fine."

He still sounds pissed and petulant, but as he leaves he squeezes Ian's shoulder and then punches Mickey in the arm with a surprising amount of affection.

“Am I next?” Ian asks when Yev disappears.

“Next?”

“Figure I’m overdue for a you ain’t going lecture.”

Mickey sighs, looking very much like he is very done with the whole section. “You ain’t my kid. You’re a perfectly capable, grown-ass man, and if you say you can handle it, I believe you. Figure you get enough of the bossy, overprotective thing from Mandy.”

When Ian kisses him, it means thank you. It’s a promise that this trust is not misplaced.

* * *

 

“What you doing all the way over there, red?” Sprawled out on his side with only a sheet draped over him, Ned pops a sweet in his mouth. Chocolate, he calls it. Imports it from the east coast special. Sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly benevolent, he even shares with Ian.

At the sound of Ned’s voice, husky and wanting, Ian stops pacing by the widow to glance over at the Captain of Three. Ned and his work in the butcher shop have done nothing to distract him from the missing newbie.

Where do they take people who’ve already been taken?

All day, Ian can’t refrain from picturing that young fucking newbie, with his too wide eyes and rushed speech. Each cry for help echoes in Ian’s ears, but it’s too late to do anything. It’s too late to help.

He wonders if this is a normal reaction to failing to help someone he never even met.  His heart is racing, palms sweaty. Meds must not be quite right. And he was so fucking hopeful that this time, after countless times, they were gonna get it right.

The prospect is exhausting and after a year of going through the painfully long process of Mandy writing down all his symptoms, Angela poking at him in the clinic in the middle of the night, smuggling the whole thing out to Doc B, and awaiting her instructions, he is horrified by the possibility of starting again.

It’s exhausting, how long the fucking thing takes, and it would be so much easier to just quit. He could surrender himself to this thing in his head, live for when the mania has him flying, and hope that fucking Ned will give him immunity.

“Come to bed.”

It’s a command because he’s a guard – head of the guards – and everything he says is a command, but Ian only manages to sit on the end of the bed. He can’t get any closer.

“What’s up, ginger snap?”

Ned’s hand is on the back of his neck and Ian flinches away. Leg bouncing. Gnawing on his thumbnail.

Newbie never even got the choice to give up on treatment. He never had a Mandy to support him or a far away Doc B to medicate him or even an Ian to talk to, to assure him that he’s not the only one, that he’s not alone.

“What happened to the newbie?” Ian says in a rush. It’s a stupid thing to ask, but he asks it anyway.

“Who?”

“Was only here for, like, a month? Had some issues. Haven’t seen him in a couple days.” Ian scoots away from Ned, turning to look at him. “Where’d he go?”

Ned sighs, sitting on the end of the bed next to Ian and letting his feet rest on the floor. “He’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Tragically, he’s no longer with us. Lost his life while working on repairing one of the big conveyor belts.”

It’s a long time before Ian can manage a response. He’s sick and tired and just really wants Mickey. “He was like me, you know.”

Ned laughs. “Was not. He was a fatty.”

Ian shivers again. “I coulda died tragically repairing some machine,” he whispers. And if Ned didn’t like the look of him, that woulda been his fate. Maybe someone woulda just put a bullet in his mentally ill brain instead. Maybe that’s what they did to the newbie.

“You,” Ned murmurs, reaching out to run a finger down Ian’s arm, “are too special, too precious for anything as ugly as that.”

But the newbie just cried and talked too fast. He made a scene in the cafeteria and pulled at his hair.

Ian slaughtered a calf. Ian killed something valuable. Ian was brought to Ned with blood soaking his arms and caked under his fingernails.

Ian was worse, but he’s still been given so many chances that the newbie wasn’t.

“Don’t want to fuck you anymore,” Ian whispers. He’s never done this before, said no so blatantly and permanently. It feels like flinging off his safety blanket and lighting it on fire, because this is the Captain of Three. Ned has the power to keep Ian safe, if the meds don’t work and he can’t get out of bed or he does something else completely crazy.

Without Ned, it’s just the not quite right meds. It’s just Mandy and far away Doc B. It’s just Ian.

“Don’t want to fuck you anymore,” Ian says again, louder now.

“Oh?” asks Ned, clearly surprised. For a moment, Ian thinks his no is meaningless, but then Ned shrugs. “Whatever you say, kid. Let me know when you change your mind.”

Ian can barely refrain from sprinting out of the cabin and once outside he really does run, all the way through the pastures and back into the slaughterhouse. He climbs the stairs up past the sleeping rooms and to the roof where he is so fucking thankful to find Mandy.

“Am I manic?” he asks, wheezing a little from his long run. He has to be manic. He just said no to the fucking captain. It’s gotta be the craziest thing he’s ever done.

Mandy frowns. “Don’t know. Come and talk with me for awhile.”

* * *

 

He tries to sleep. Really, he does his best.   They even changed the whole schedule for the day to accommodate sleeping, eating dinner at an absurdly early hour. Mickey gave a moving speech as he stood on a bench. His words were soft, steady, sure, as he thanked the people of Eighteen and assured them that they’d do everything in their power to make the operation at Three successful.  

After they ate they said their goodbyes, to Lip, to Yev, to Amanda and the others who will not be joining them tonight.

They went to bed early, in an attempt make up for the hours of sleep Ian will miss out on when Sully shows up in the middle of the night, Peg piloting the hovercraft to take them all to Three.

But even with the lights off, curled up behind Mickey and holding him tight, Mickey’s breath even and slow with sleep, Ian can do nothing but stare at the back of Mickey’s head, his mind buzzing.

He might doze off for a few hours, before waking abruptly and forcing himself to wait a little longer, to let Mickey sleep a little longer.

But it’s Mickey who turns in Ian’s arms and studies his face in the moonlight coming in from the open window. And Ian expects Mickey to close his eyes, to whisper _go back to sleep_ , but instead Mickey kisses him, gentle and tender with their noses bumping together.

Ian’s not entirely sure how they went from that to this, Mickey in his lap moving slow and hot and heavy. The time’s passed in a blur of hands and teeth and mouths, Mickey touching him like he’s precious. For all Ian knows they could’ve missed the revolution completely.

Mickey pants his breath onto Ian’s cheek and tangles his fingers in Ian’s hair.

It’s a fight to keep his eyes open so he can keep looking back at Mickey, his eyes bright and glassy, his expression intense and focused. Ian wants to kiss him but he can’t catch enough air in his lungs.

He presses his fingers into Mickey’s ribs, Mickey’s spine, and trails his hands down to squeeze Mickey’s ass. This is all Mickey. His skin hot and flushed, his gaze never leaving Ian’s face. And it’s a miracle, that Mickey is right here, moving, moving, _moving_ over him. Somehow, Mickey found him. This is the proof.

And it’s so good, like it’s always so good. Ian wants to just keep doing this forever, but he can hardly complain when it’s done, not when Mickey’s face looks like that, his pleasure moaned in Ian’s ear.

Somehow he forces himself to clean them both up before settling back against the pillows, pulling Mickey close and sighing as Mickey presses his nose into Ian’s neck. He closes his eyes and revels in these few minutes of peace with Mickey. He’s calm now, steady and mind quiet, ready for whatever comes.

The newfound steadiness does not leave him, even when he opens his eyes and checks the clock, noting they’ll need to be down on the pad in just a few minutes.

“Alright,” Ian says, kissing Mickey’s sweaty hairline. “Alright. Time to get up, Mick.” He tries to pull away, to get out of bed and pull on the black clothes Karen helped him stitch together, but Mickey holds tighter. When Ian sways towards the edge of the bed, Mickey sways with him, his forehead seemingly stuck to Ian’s neck.

Ian laughs, kisses Mickey’s temple, and then pries Mickey off him, struggling with Mickey’s limbs so he can roll out of bed and start rifling through the clothes thrown on top of the dresser.

He can’t look at himself as he pulls on all that black. He’s dressed as one of his nightmares. The long sleeves and dark pants cover every single scar, but Ian can’t look down at himself so he looks out the window instead.

“Whole sections out there waiting to say goodbye,” Ian says, tightening his belt as he stares down at the pad where everyone is milling around under floodlights instead of sleeping.

Sully’s here with the hovercraft already, Peg with him to fly it. The rest of their group is all gathered, too.  Mandy sits on a crate near the ramp, Karen hovering at her shoulder.  Beto’s strapped up with three guns, big and menacing even from this distance. Fiona’s huddled with Paco and Malik, all ready to go.

“Everyone’s there but us,” Ian continues. “And we’re not even late yet. Should probably get going, though. Got a tight schedule to keep after all.”

He turns around, shocked to find Mickey is still in bed, sitting on the edge. At some point, while Ian was feeling steady, getting ready, Mickey really wasn’t. He’s got his head propped up in his hands, elbows resting on his thighs, staring at the floor.

“Mick?”

At the sound of his name Mickey startles, jerking and flailing a little. “Shit. Sorry.”

Ian watches him and laces up his boots. Mickey’s movements are slow and he’s too quiet as he pulls on black clothes.

“Mick,” Ian says again, when they’re both fully dressed.

Mickey squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head once. Ian wants to feel steady again.

“I’m okay,” Mickey says.

“Don’t look okay.”

“I _am_ ,” Mickey insists. He crosses the room before Ian can blink, pushing Ian to sit on the end of their bed and crawling into his lap. He cradles Ian’s face between his hands and bites his lip. “About all of it, I’m fine. Except.” He hangs his head, clears his throat. “Except I just got you back and I can’t… I won’t—“

“Hey,” says Ian, running his hands up and down Mickey’s back. “Hey.”

“Just, no hero shit. Okay?”

“Okay,” Ian whispers.

“Mean it, Ian, you gotta be smart about this, keep yourself as safe as possible, or I’m gonna fucking lose it.”

“Okay, Mick. Okay.”

“No hero shit. No swooping in to save the day. You save yourself first. Promise, Ian.”

Privately, in his head, Ian changes the promise. He’ll save himself second, and Mickey first. “Promise, Mickey.”

Mickey kisses him gently, finally looking steady when he pulls back. “Come on, tough guy. You’re gonna make us late to the revolution.”

Ian laughs and slaps Mickey’s ass before they head out.

* * *

 

"So what'd you do to get transferred to this hellhole?" Kev asks the new guy over the tasteless gruel of their dinner. The newbie isn't exactly new anymore, but he is still the newest prisoner as they haven't had another transfer since he got here a couple months ago, not long after the last newbie disappeared.

Ian’s just meeting Iggy today. Just meeting a lot of people for the first time, now that he’s taking his meals with Kev and Bonnie.   It’s better, eating with other people, one of the many things that’s better now that they’ve finally found a combination of meds that doesn’t leave him queasy or jittery or cottony.

Six months. Same cocktail. No Ned. No guards at all. And it’s better.

Across the table, Iggy tilts his head, considering.

No one's asked Iggy this question yet. It's a personal inquiry, a private story of how a prisoner fucked up bad enough to come here where people work with death and knives and a moments inattention leads to lost fingers or hands or whole limbs.

Kev and Iggy must've spent some time bonding somewhere, for Kev to ask a question like that.

Next to Ian, Bonnie goes still with her spoon halfway to her lips, tasteless stew splashing back into her bowl with an unappetizing plop. Ian sets down his own utensil, watching Iggy intently.

When Ian was asked this question – also by Kev, on his first shaky day butchering – he couldn't bear to share the full story. Instead of explaining Roger and getting caught, getting betrayed, he said "got on a guard's bad side" and left it at that.

Kev didn't push then, and he won't push now, except that Iggy doesn't duck his head in shame like Ian did when faced with this question. He grins.

"The wrong guard heard me say something bout M," Iggy says, sitting up straight and proud. "Don't fret, didn't hear anything important, but I had to punch him in the face to distract him from the little bit he heard."

Iggy's grin falters slightly as he glances between the confused faces of Kev, Bonnie, and Ian. Ian's glad he's not the only one to have no idea what Iggy's talking about.

"The fuck is M?" asks Bonnie.

Iggy's mouth falls open and he runs a hand through his lank, pale hair. "Never mind," he says, throwing a glare at Kev before going back to his soup.

Ian, Kev, and Bonnie all ask more questions, and it takes a full three weeks to convince Iggy that they can be trusted, that they hate the system enough not to speak about whatever dangerous information Iggy holds.

"Can't believe it," Iggy says, shaking his head. They huddle at the end of a long table in the cafeteria, the loud buzz of prisoners laughing and conversing after a long slaughter day to cover Iggy's words. He makes them keep eating to avoid suspicion when all Ian wants to do it listen with rapt attention.

"At One, all the prisoner's know about M," he continues. "Been testing the waters outside you guys here. And no one knows."

"Knows what?" Ian asks, his teeth clenched tight. His body is practically buzzing with the promise of something hopeful, something dangerous, something that will hurt Pop Com and their guards the way Ian's been hurt.

With exaggerated casualness, Iggy glances around. Ian notices the guards at the entrance to the cafeteria, chatting with each other instead of circling the circumference of the room like they’re supposed to.

"M and The Good Guards," Iggy says quietly, serious in a way he usually isn't. "They're the fucking revolution. Gonna tear it all down."

Kev looks shocked. Bonnie grins. Ian snorts, completely skeptical.

"Good guards?" he says, rolling his eyes. "Ain't no such thing as a good guard."

Except Mandy. But Mandy doesn’t count as a guard at all.

Iggy shakes his head. "Maybe not here. But at One, they exist, quietly, secretly. They don't punish. They know the prisoners, like the prisoners, hear their stories and understand and protect when they can without getting caught themselves. And when the Bad Guards or the captain ain't around, they share M's words."

"What words?" whispers Bonnie. Her knuckles turn white, clutching a knife.

And Iggy shares the words. M's words of revolution. And Ian can't force himself to eat any longer as he listens to Iggy speak.

"Eventually, we'll get a Good Guard here," Iggy says. "Might take awhile. Whole thing moves slow as fuck, from what I gather. But at One a Good Guard came in quiet like, talking to prisoners, talking to other guards, until some of those ones became Good Guards, too, and then more transferred in. It will happen here, too."

The whole Good Guard thing is obviously bullshit. (Except Mandy. Always except Mandy.) He made the mistake of trusting a guard once and now he slices up chunks of meat as punishment.

But the idea of M quickly becomes a relief. Ian can breathe a little easier knowing that somewhere out in the sections, there is a prisoner fighting when Ian can't do anything but survive. Ian's got to follow the rules the best he can, even with his mind spinning and his body too exhausted to get out of bed, but M doesn't have too.

M is the revolution Ian is too consumed with survival to start himself. M is doing good work while Ian is just trying to stay out of The Shed and keep his bruises to a minimum.

A prisoner out there is resisting, and Ian can breathe a little easier even though he can't resist, too.

* * *

 

They move silent around cows, through the pasture where Ian stabbed and stabbed that calf so many years ago.  Crouched low, guns drawn, they follow close to Mandy as she navigates the familiar pasture.

His heart is hammering in his ears, every twig that snaps between his boot louder than a gun shot and every few seconds he glances behind him to make sure Mickey is really here, with him at Three.

They’re not far from the agreed upon meeting location, just outside the view of the cameras attached to the slaughterhouse. If everything went okay on Vee’s end, then the guards on patrol out here will already be locked up, the security room with the camera feed also on its way to being taken by prisoners armed by Veronica and led by Iggy.

“Fiona!” The cry pierces the silence and their whole group freezes, surveying the surrounding are frantically as they attempt to make sense of who decided it would be a good idea to start fucking screaming.

“The fuck?” mutters Mickey, still crouched low but shuffling a little closer to Ian until they’re shoulder to shoulder.

“Fiona!” The same voice. Familiar, but not one of the people who flew in from Eighteen.

“Shut the fuck up, Carl!” A second voice. Also familiar and feminine, using the same tone Mickey uses when he needs to remind everyone that he’s in charge.

“Carl!” Behind him Fiona stands from her crouch, conspicuous as fuck in the not that tall grass and moonlight.   “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

The confusion has Ian’s heart beating out of his chest and he glances around wildly, only slightly appeased to see that everyone – besides fucking conspicuous as fuck Fiona – appears equally as confused. Mickey squeezes his elbow, a silent plea to stay calm.

There’s movement in the grass behind them, and more cursing. A dark figure nearly crashes into Mandy and suddenly finds himself with eight guns trained on his chest, bright red starburst patterns ready to stun him into oblivion.

“Hold fire!” Fiona hisses, her gun back in her holster.

“Hold fire,” confirms Mickey, his gun pointing towards the ground.

“Hold fire!” agrees that second familiar voice, coming closer.

“Fiona!”

And Fiona is lurching forward, pulling the black skull cap off the guard’s head and night vision goggles off his face, before pulling him into a hug.

Ian finally understands that this Carl is actually Guard Carl, the new guard who Bonnie found so infatuating in the months before his transfer. Ian lowers his gun fractionally, reasonably certain that he’s not a threat with all the hugging and crying currently going on.

Fiona is crying, her mouth pulled into a smile or a grimace. It’s hard to tell. Ian can see all her teeth. She hugs Guard Carl and Ian remembers Bonnie telling him over and over that Carl was a good one, that he was out here looking for his sister.

Fiona must be the sister.

“This is going real fucking well.” Veronica joins them a moment later. She’s flanked on either side by Bonnie and Kev. His old friends wave at him enthusiastically and Ian manages a smile, but his adrenaline is running too hard for him to understand all the smiles around him.

“Fuck,” says Mickey, lurching forward to hug Veronica.

“Introductions later,” Vee says, beaming back and forth between Mickey and Fiona, who hasn’t quite managed to pry herself away from Guard Carl.

“My brother,” she says, looking properly ashamed of the fact that she nearly fucked up their mission.

“Figured,” says Mickey. “What’s up?” he asks Vee.

“All the guards on patrol tonight are locked up in the basement,” Vee explains as everyone gathers a little closer, seeming to remember at once that this is a fucking revolution and they should really fucking focus. “The rest are asleep in the barracks. Unarmed. Angela has it surrounded with a bunch of prisoners. Armed.”

“Guard Angela?” Ian asks, spurious because he can’t help it.

“Chill,” says Bonnie, pointing at him from over Vee’s shoulder with only her middle finger.

And somehow the simple command works. Ian chills. He doesn’t worry about the trustworthiness of Guard Angela because tomorrow there will be no guards and there will be no prisoners.

Just people.

With a final glance at Ian, Mickey nods at Vee. “Let’s get to it.”

* * *

 

Ned’s just one mostly harmless old man who lives alone in a luxurious cabin as far from the cow reek of the pasture as possible. It’s probably excessive to have five of them creeping up on one old man, given Ian’s never seen another guard anywhere near the captain’s cabin, but obviously Mickey insisted on being with Ian and so did Mandy. Karen wouldn’t leave Mandy and Beto’s been pretty adamant on following around Mickey since they landed here, but there’s safety in numbers.

That’s why Mickey waited so long. Across The Farmland, he wanted to have the numbers.

Outside the captain’s cabin there are no guards, as usual. Ian rushes towards the door, gun held tight, and types in the old key code. There is a click and a whirl and Ian exhales as the door opens before him. Plan B (smash out some windows) will not be necessary.

Following Ian’s lead, they move through the dark cabin, checking each room with flashlights as they go until they reach the bedroom in back.

There is Ned. Certainly not the worst of his nightmares, but the most recent, powerful person to offer Ian safety but only in exchange for sex.   The Captain of Three’s always been a little hapless, a little strange, and he was never particularly ruthless with Ian, but he was to others.

Mandy checks his beside table, finds no weapons. Beto pokes underneath Ned’s pillow and pulls out a pistol without waking the old man.

“Get up,” says Ian when he’s sure everyone’s in position, guns aimed. “Wake up, you piece of shit.”

Ned blinks and focuses on Ian, licking his lips and leering as his eyes roam hungry down and back up Ian's body. His stomach rolls with disgust, but he remains steady. His hands don't shake. Adrenaline is still humming in his blood but he is deadly calm. His fury is controlled and his focus is unshakable.

"Bout time you came crawling back to my bed," says Ned, his voice low with sleep and lust. "Get in here."

Jaw clenched, chin out, arms crossed, Ian stands angry and calm and unashamed.

Calm is not a word that can be applied to Mickey, however.

Red faced and shaking, Mickey elbows his way in between Ian and the bed where Ned lies prone. "Guess again, asshole," he hisses out between grinding teeth.

For a glorious moment, as Ned wakes up a little and finally takes in the fact that he's surrounded by the Captain of Eighteen, the First Overseer of Eighteen, Ned's former guard, a small blonde stranger, and a truly liberated Ian, panic flashes over his features. He tries to be subtle about going for the gun Beto removed from under his pillow and when he realizes how fucked he truly is, he starts sneering.

"Knew you were more trouble than you were worth," Ned says as Beto pulls him to his feet and Karen roughly cuffs his hands behind his back. "What insane thing are you doing now? Shoulda got rid of you when I had a chance, you crazy little fag—“

Ned stops talking when Mickey's fist abruptly slams into his nose.

"Motherfucking ow!" howls Mickey, clutching his punching hand to his chest as Ned moans in a pathetic pile on the floor.

"Mickey!" Ian says, losing his calm for the first time. He grabs Mickey's wrist, gently prying his hand from his chest to study his knuckles. They’re a little red, might get bruised, but they aren't bleeding.

The same cannot be said of Ned's nose.

"That really fucking hurt," Mickey says, gaping at Ian. He’s shocked and outraged and Ian tries not to laugh.

"Tell me this is not the first time you’ve punched someone," says Beto. His foot is on Ned's back, keeping the captain bleeding on the floor.

"When would I ever of punched someone before?" Mickey snaps, defensive. He lets Ian hold his hand anyway.

"You've punched walls," Ian points out.

"Thought his nose wouldn't be as hard as a fucking wall!" Mickey replies. "Fuck."

From the other side of the bed, Karen cackles. "Who's been saying for years that if its gonna get violent, its gonna be them who starts it? Who lectures us all the time to stay cool, stay calm? Who the fuck just made it violent? Huh, M?"

Mickey scowls. "At least I didn't shoot the fucker. This piece of shit deserves worse."

"Who the hell are you people?" demands Ned from the floor. He starts moaning again as Beto digs his heel into his back.

"Alright, alright," Ian says when it looks like Mickey and Karen are gonna forget the revolution in favor of yelling at each other. "Let's keep this revolting professional, people. Got a schedule to keep."

Ian kisses Mickey, quick and hard, when they get back out of the captain’s cabin. He leaves the place feeling a thousand pounds lighter.

* * *

 

“We're getting a new guard," Iggy hisses as he crashes into the table, bumping into Ian and sloshing stew out of his bowl. "Finally replacing the second overseer."

"Really?" says Ian, frowning and skeptical. .

"Really!" says Bonnie, bouncing in her seat.

"Really," says Kev, stroking his beard.

"Really," replies Iggy, nodding a lot and looking over his shoulder, relaxing when he sees that the closest guard is Mandy. "This could be it."

When Iggy first showed up, talking about resistance, Ian let himself get wrapped up in the fantasy.

But then months dragged into years and nothing changed. Iggy still talks about M, talks about hope but instead of elation, instead of hope, Ian just feels disillusioned. It's a nice story and he wants to believe there’s really a prisoner called M that is out there changing things, but hope hurts and so Ian’s quit doing it.

"Iggy, come on," Ian says, groaning. "How many guard transfers have we had in the last two years? And none of them good. Just goes from bad to worse."

"When did you get so pessimistic, huh?" Iggy asks. "You used to be just a big of a believer as me."

"That’s not true.”

Iggy opens his mouth, ready to yell out his stupid as fuck hope for the whole cafeteria to hear, but Kev steps in, reaching across the table to squeeze Iggy's shoulder. "Really don't want to sit through another meal of you two having this argument, so kindly shut the fuck up."

Iggy and Ian settle into an angry silence, aggressively eating their dinner and glaring.

"But it really could be it, right?" Bonnie’s whisper breaks the silence. She looks at Iggy, eyes just shinning with all that hope like Ian's did when Iggy first brought them words of revolution. "This could be it? Finally a Good Guard?"

"Course," Iggy says, beaming. "I gotta good feeling, Bon."

* * *

 

It's not a Good Guard, just another sadistic fuck who witnesses Bonnie slice off her pointer finger three days later. The new second overseer of Three throws Bonnie in The Shed the moment the bleeding stops, to teach her a lesson for being careless with a knife, as if losing a finger wasn't enough.

And when Bonnie finally gets out four days later, she doesn't say anything. She just sits huddled close to Kev, not eating. She shivers and doesn't eat and when Iggy opens his mouth to spew out more fucking hope, Ian glares until he shuts it again.

Iggy gets really good at shutting his mouth about fucking revolutions and bullshit saviors, at least around Ian.

And Ian gets even better at keeping his head down, surviving each day as they come, feeling nothing so dangerous as hope.

* * *

 

The revolution means reunions.

That’s what Ian realizes as they sit on the slaughterhouse roof, watching the sun rise on the whole new world.

The revolution is Lip bringing internet to the sections, developing a website to help other people find their people, and it’s Carl completely blowing his cover to embrace his sister. The revolution is Mickey spending eleven years searching for Ian and Mandy making deals to get pills smuggled in and that time Ian finally told Ned no.

The revolution is Kev sitting pressed up against Vee who’s sitting pressed up against Fiona who’s sitting pressed up against Carl who’s sitting pressed up against Bonnie, all in a line on the roof. The revolution is Mandy holding Karen’s hand and Mickey punching Ned right in the nose.

The revolution is also the fifty-four guards and one captain currently locked in the basement of Three. When they locked the door tight, Ned’s was still bleeding.

Carl and Bonnie are bloody, too, from a brief skirmish with a guard who they found hiding in the bathroom.  Bonnie's lip is busted and Carl's got scratch marks on his cheek, all the way down to his neck, but they seem proud of themselves, pleased that for them, this fight was actually a fight. 

Bonnie's lip, Carl's cheek, Mickey's hand.  Their casualty list is short, the injuries miraculously minor.

Ian's more jittery now that the mission is over and his adrenaline is no longer raging.  He sits on the roof of Three as the sun rises, carefully counting out each breath.  He's leaning back against Mickey's chest and his heartbeat is steady and sure against Ian's back.  Mickey's arm is wrapped around Ian's waist, his hand on Ian's thigh, and Ian holds an ice pack to his swollen knuckles.

There is nothing left to do.  The plans have been executed nearly without flaws. Vee got in contact with all the other sections, and with the exception of a few short scuffles, they were successful, too. 

There are no more Pop Com guards walking free in The Farmland.

It's been decided that Fiona and Vee are going to stay here with Kev, Carl, and Bonnie, to better help Iggy and Angela lead Three's newly liberated population.  Everyone else is going home, Sully and Peg delivering them back to Eighteen before heading to Four,  

There’s nothing left to do but no one seems ready to move yet.  They sit close and quiet, as the sun comes up on their whole new world.

Ian's not the only one jittery.  Everyone seems to wear a similar expression of shock, like despite how long they've planned it, how big of an advantage they thought they'd have, no one expected it to go this well. 

It's stunning and daunting and everyone keeps glancing at each other, keeps glancing at Mickey, all asking the same silent question.

Now what?

Only Mickey seems perfectly serene, his head tiled back, face angled towards the steadily rising sun.  Ian stares up at him, a little in awe.  He’s so fucking beautiful and so fucking good and somehow, last night, he accomplished the impossible.  He's seen this coming for almost as long as he looked for Ian and Ian is just so fucking proud.  

"Now comes the hard part, people," Mickey says. 

The hard part should be terrifying, but Mickey sounds so sure.

Six months ago, less than, Ian was a prisoner at this very section, barely able to think past survival.  He forgot how to want things.  He forgot how to choose things.  His routine kept him alive, and the thought of not knowing how everyday of the rest of his life would unfold was horrifying, excruciating, and panic inducing.  

But he's here with Mickey, at the beginning of the whole new world, and he's nothing but hopeful, nothing but happy, nothing but determined to see this thing out.

"What do you think, tough guy?" Mickey whispers in his ear and nuzzles his cheek.  "Ready to get home?"

"Yeah, Mick.  Let's go home."

* * *

 

Going home is no easy task and when they get off the roof they’re met with a sea of former prisoners, the ones who joined Iggy in capturing the guards and those who woke up to the beginning of the whole new world.  

And they all, every one of them, from the timid ones who pluck chickens with quick fingers to the mean slaughterers who brag about how many cows they can kill in an hour, want to meet Mickey.

Gone is the serene leader from the roof, basking in a moment of triumph, and its comical, just how shocked and horrified Mickey is at the prospect of meeting his followers. His eyes are huge and his mouth is slack as Iggy leads him around, making introductions.  Iggy's expression is the non-verbal equivalent of _I told you so_.  Chest puffed up, Iggy parades Mickey around, proof that Iggy wasn't wrong.  Proof that all the hope wasn't false.  Proof that the wait was worth it.

Ian hangs back at the ramp to the hovercraft, exchanging looks with Karen and Beto, greatly enjoying Mickey's discomfort.  

Eventually Mickey gets it together enough to start shaking hands and actually speaking when spoken too.

After a solid half hour of being herded through the crowd by Iggy, Sully stands on the ramp, sticks both his fingers in his mouth, and whistles. "Wrap it up, oh glorious leader!" he shouts when he has Mickey's attention. “Got places to be.”

Mickey flips him off, but starts making slow progress back towards the hovercraft.  

"What the fuck," he mutters when he rejoins the group.  Blushing hard, he wraps himself around Ian, hiding against Ian's chest.

"You're important to them, Mick," Ian murmurs, no longer even a little bit angry that this whole time, it's been Mickey.  Guard or not, he's glad it’s Mickey.  Mythic figure or not, he's so glad it’s Mickey.

"It's weird," Mickey whines.

Karen snorts.  "Better get used to it.  Looks like they want a speech."

Mickey and Ian both look up to see three hundred or so expectant faces, waiting.  Suddenly, these people are just people, not prisoners, and they want to hear from Mickey.

"Fuck," he hisses, looking up at Ian with sheer panic.

Ian bites back a grin and manages to hold back his glee in order to nod encouragingly.

Mickey takes a deep breath and walks forward, to the very edge of the crowd.  Beto appears from nowhere with a crate and Mickey glowers at him as he climbs up on it.

"Uh," he says, thumbing at his lip.  "Hey, everyone. I'm Mickey."  He covers his heart with his hand, and takes a moment to breathe and look at the crowd.  "Thanks for doing what you did last night.  Wouldn't have gotten anywhere without you.  Guess Iggy here's been telling you for awhile, bout this whole revolution we’ve been working on. Sorry it took us so long to get here.”

Mickey pauses again, whipping at his lip some more. Ian gets a little misty eyed, watching Mickey up there, taking as loud as he can manage so everyone can hear him and so obviously overcome.

Mickey opens his mouth again, but instead of his voice ringing out to the crowd it’s a loud _pop pop pop._

Ian jumps, covering his ears, and he knows that sound. He’d never heard it before Eighteen, but Mickey said if Ian wanted to come with, he’d learn to shoot a gun. Live ammo and stuns alike.

That _pop pop pop_ means live ammo and even as he processes that bit of information, he can’t quite believe that someone is shooting.

The crowd starts murmuring to each other, looking around wildly and more confused than Ian. They’ve never heard that sound.

To his right there’s a commotion and he watches dumbly as Carl drags a figure in black out of the bushes, Vee disarms him, and Beto punches him and punches him.

And then Ian turns to stare straight ahead, where only a few seconds ago Mickey was standing on the crate, talking to people who woke up to find themselves actual people and not prisoners.

The crate is empty and there is Mickey beside it, lying on the ground, bleeding.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you yell at me, there is more and it will be posted soon. Yes, this series is now a trilogy, and the first chapter of the next installment is written and being edited so it should be up real soon.
> 
> Okay, now you can go ahead and yell at me. Totally deserved with a cliffhanger like that. You can come yell at me on [Tumblr](http://jaxington.tumblr.com/) to. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. You are the best.

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to [Rose](http://gardenofblueroses.tumblr.com/) and [Jess](http://foxrabbitcabbage.tumblr.com/) for catching all my mistakes. You both rock.
> 
> Come say hi on [Tumblr!](http://jaxington.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> Also! The captain before Mickey, Lishman in Eighteen, is now officially Candace Lishman, leaving Ned totally free to be captain for Three. Just FYI. (I really did a sloppy job planning Eighteen and now my continuity is suffering, but consider it corrected!)


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